t h e c a m b r i d g e c o m pa n i o n to

alexander pope

Alexander Pope was the greatest poet of his age and the dominant influence on
eighteenth-century British poetry. His large oeuvre, written over a thirty-year
period, encompasses satires, odes and political verse and reflects the sexual,
moral and cultural issues of the world around him, often in brilliant lines and
phrases which have become part of our language today. This is the first overview
to analyse the full range of Pope’s work and to set it in its historical and cul-
tural context. Specially commissioned essays by leading scholars explore all of
Pope’s major works, including the sexual politics of The Rape of the Lock,
the philosophical enquiries of An Essay on Man and the Moral Essays, and the
mock-heroic of The Dunciad in its various forms. This volume will be indispens-
able not only for students and scholars of Pope’s work, but also for all those
interested in the Augustan age.

pat ro g e rs is DeBartolo Chair in the Liberal Arts at the University of South

Florida.
 THE CAMBRIDGE
C O M PA N I O N T O

ALEXANDER POPE

EDITED BY

PAT R O G E R S
 c a m b r i d g e u n i v e rs i t y p r e s s
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi

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 CONTENTS

List of illustrations page vii

Notes on contributors viii
List of abbreviations xii
Alexander Pope chronology xiii

Introduction 1
pat ro g e rs

1 Pope, self, and world 14

helen deutsch

2 Pope’s friends and enemies: fighting with shadows 25

dav i d n o k e s

3 Pope’s versification and voice 37

jo h n s i t t e r

4 Poetic spaces 49
cy n t h i a wa l l

5 Pope’s Homer and his poetic career 63

steven shankman

6 Pope and the classics 76

h owa r d d . w e i n b ro t

7 Pope and the Elizabethans 89

dav i d fa i r e r

v
 contents

8 Pope in Arcadia: pastoral and its dissolution 105

pat ro g e rs

9 Pope and ideology 118

b r i a n yo u n g

10 Pope and the poetry of opposition 134

h owa r d e rs k i n e - h i l l

11 Crime and punishment 150

pau l ba i n e s

12 Landscapes and estates 161

m a l c o l m k e l sa l l

13 Money 175
c at h e r i n e i n g r as s i a

14 Pope and the book trade 186

ja m e s m c l av e rt y

15 Pope and gender 198

va l e r i e ru m b o l d

16 Medicine and the body 210

g e o r g e ro u s s e au

17 Pope and the other 222

l au r a b row n

Further reading 237

Index 247

vi
 I L L U S T R AT I O N S

1. “Sol thro’ white Curtains shot a tim’rous Ray.” Frontispiece to

Canto i, The Rape of the Lock (1714), courtesy of Special
Collections, University of Virginia Library. page 53
2. “Books and the Man I sing.” The Dunciad Variorum (1729),
Book the First, courtesy of Special Collections, University of
Virginia Library. 60
3. Pope’s villa at Twickenham, after the painting by Peter Andreas
Rysbrack, engraved by Nathaniel Parr (1735). 163
4. A plan of Pope’s garden at Twickenham by John Serle, his
gardener (1745). 167

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 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

pau l ba i n e s is Professor in the School of English, University of Liverpool. His

publications include The House of Forgery in Eighteenth-Century Britain (1999),
The Complete Critical Guide to Alexander Pope (2000), The Long Eighteenth
Century (2004), several articles in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography,
and a number of articles on poetry, crime, and punishment in the early eighteenth
century. His biography of the rogue bookseller Edmund Curll, co-written with Pat
Rogers, appeared in 2007.

l au r a b row n is John Wendell Anderson Professor of English at Cornell University

and author of Fables of Modernity: Literature and Culture in the English Eigh-
teenth Century (2001), Ends of Empire: Women and Ideology in Early Eighteenth-
Century English Literature (1993), Rereading Literature: Alexander Pope (1985),
and English Dramatic Form 1660–1760: An Essay in Generic History (1981),
as well as co-editor, with Felicity Nussbaum, of The New Eighteenth Century:
Theory-Politics-English Literature (1987).

h e l e n d e u t s c h is Professor of English at UCLA and the author of Resemblance

and Disgrace: Alexander Pope and the Deformation of Culture (1996), and Loving
Dr. Johnson (2005), as well as co-editor of Defects: Engendering the Modern Body
(2000). She has recently returned to Pope’s work as one of the focuses of a new
book project on gendered subjectivity, embodiment, and intimate literary forms
such as the essay and the verse epistle.

h owa r d e rs k i n e - h i l l is a Fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge, and a for-

mer Professor of Literary History in the University of Cambridge. He is a Fellow
of the British Academy. His many works include The Social Milieu of Alexander
Pope (1975) and an edition of Pope’s Selected Letters (2000). He has also written
Poetry of Opposition and Revolution: Dryden to Wordsworth (1996) and, with
Eveline Cruickshanks, The Atterbury Plot (2004).

dav i d fa i r e r is Professor of Eighteenth-Century English Literature at the Univer-

sity of Leeds. His most recent book is English Poetry of the Eighteenth Century,

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 n o t e s o n c o n t r i b u to rs

1700–1789 (2003). He is also the author of Pope’s Imagination (1984), The Poetry
of Alexander Pope (1989), and editor of Pope: New Contexts (1990), The Corre-
spondence of Thomas Warton (1995), and the first complete printing of Warton’s
History of English Poetry (1998). With Christine Gerrard he has edited Eighteenth-
Century Poetry: An Annotated Anthology (second edition, 2004).

c at h e r i n e i n g r as s i a is Professor of English and Associate Dean for Academic

Affairs at Virginia Commonwealth University. Her books include Authorship,
Commerce and Gender in Eighteenth-Century England: A Culture of Paper Credit
(1998), “More Solid Learning”; New Perspectives on Alexander Pope’s Dunciad,
co-edited with Claudia Thomas (2000), and A Companion to the Eighteenth-
Century Novel and Culture, co-edited with Paula R. Backscheider (2005). She is
also the editor of Eliza Haywood’s Anti-Pamela and Fielding’s Shamela (2004),
and a past editor of Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture.

m a l c o l m k e l sa l l is Professor Emeritus at Cardiff University. His principal pub-

lications in the field of architectural and landscape iconography are The Great
Good Place: The Country House and English Literature (1993), Jefferson and
the Iconography of Romanticism: Folk, Land, Culture and the Romantic Nation
(1999), and Literary Representations of the Irish Country House: Civilisation and
Savagery Under the Union (2003). He has taught at the universities of Cardiff,
Exeter, Oxford and Reading and has been visiting Professor at Hiroshima, Paris,
and Wisconsin, and International Scholar in Residence at the Center for Jefferson
Studies, Charlottesville, Virginia.

ja m e s m c l av e rt y is Professor of English at Keele University. He has written

widely on literary and bibliographical topics, including a book on Pope, Print
and Meaning (2001). He revised and edited for the press David Foxon’s lectures
on Pope and the Early Eighteenth-Century Book Trade (1991), as well as David
Fleeman’s Bibliography of the Works of Samuel Johnson (2000).

dav i d n o k e s is Professor of English at King’s College London. He has written

biographies of Jonathan Swift, John Gay, and Jane Austen, and is currently working
on a tercentenary biography of Samuel Johnson, to be published in 2009. He
has also written television programmes on Swift and Frankenstein, adaptations of
Clarissa and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, and a novel, The Nightingale Papers.

pat ro g e rs is DeBartolo Professor in the Liberal Arts at the University of South

Florida, and the author of several books on Pope and his contemporaries, including
The Alexander Pope Encyclopedia (2004) and Pope and the Destiny of the Stuarts
(2005). Recent work includes a biography of Edmund Curll (2007), with Paul
Baines, and an edition of Pope’s major works for Oxford World’s Classics (2006).

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 n o t e s o n c o n t r i b u to rs

g e o r g e ro u s s e au has written numerous books, including This Long Disease,

my Life: Alexander Pope and the Sciences (1968), with Marjorie Hope Nicolson,
Goldsmith: The Critical Heritage (1974), with Pat Rogers, The Enduring Legacy:
Alexander Pope Tercentenary Essays (1988), and The Languages of Psyche: Mind
and Body in Enlightenment Thought (1990). He has also published a trilogy en-
titled Pre- and Post-Modern Discourses: Medical, Scientific, Anthropological
(1991), with Roy Porter, Gout: The Patrician Malady (1998), Framing and Imag-
ining Disease in Cultural History (2003), Yourcenar: A Biography (2004), and
Nervous Acts: Essays on Literature, Culture and Sensibility (2004).

va l e r i e ru m b o l d is Reader in English Literature at the University of Birming-

ham. She is author of Women’s Place in Pope’s World (1989) and of a range of
articles on Pope and on women writers of the eighteenth century. Her edition of
Alexander Pope: The Dunciad in Four Books (1743) appeared in 1999. She is one
of the editors, with Julian Ferraro and Nigel Wood, contributing to the Longman
Annotated Pope, and is currently working on a volume for the Cambridge Edition
of the Works of Jonathan Swift.

s t e v e n s h a n k m a n is Professor of English and Classics at the University of

Oregon. He is the author of Pope’s Iliad: Homer in the Age of Passion (1983)
and In Search of the Classic (1994). His edition of Pope’s translation of The Iliad
appeared in 1996. Recent books include, with Stephen Durrant, The Siren and the
Sage: Knowledge and Wisdom in Ancient Greece and China (2000).

jo h n s i t t e r is Notre Dame Professor of English at the University of Notre Dame,

the editor of The Cambridge Companion to Eighteenth-Century Poetry (2001), and
author of Literary Loneliness in Mid-Eighteenth-Century England (1982), which
was awarded the Louis Gottschalk Prize, and Arguments of Augustan Wit (1991),
other studies of eighteenth-century poetry and satire. He teaches courses in those
areas and in modern poetry.

cy n t h i a wa l l is Professor of English at the University of Virginia. She is the

author of Poetics of Space: Transformations of Description in the Eighteenth Cen-
tury (2006) and The Literary and Cultural Spaces of Restoration London (1998),
as well as an editor of Pope, Defoe, and Bunyan.

h owa r d d . w e i n b ro t is Ricardo Quintana Professor of English, and William

Freeman Vilas Research Professor in the College of Letters and Science at the
University of Wisconsin, Madison. He has published widely on numerous aspects
of eighteenth-century texts and contexts. His latest books are Menippean Satire
Reconsidered: From Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century (2005) and Aspects of
Samuel Johnson: Essays on His Arts, Mind, Afterlife, and Politics (2005).

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 n o t e s o n c o n t r i b u to rs

b r i a n yo u n g is University Lecturer and Official Student and Tutor in History

at Christ Church, Oxford. He is the author of Religion and Enlightenment in
Eighteenth-Century England (1998), and a co-editor, with Stefan Collini and
Richard Whatmore, of two collections of essays, Economy, Polity, Society and
History, Religion, Culture: British Intellectual History 1750–1950 (2000), and,
with Richard Whatmore, of Palgrave Advances in Intellectual History (2006). He
is currently engaged in completing a study of Victorian understandings of the eigh-
teenth century.

xi
 A B B R E V I AT I O N S

Anecdotes Joseph Spence, Observations, Anecdotes, and Characters

of Books and Men, ed. J. M. Osborn, 2 vols. (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1966).
Corr The Correspondence of Alexander Pope, ed. G. Sherburn,
5 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956).
Johnson, LOP Samuel Johnson, The Lives of the Poets, ed. G. B. Hill, 3
vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1905).
Life Maynard Mack, Alexander Pope: A Life (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1985).
Prose The Prose Works of Alexander Pope, vol. 1, ed. N. Ault
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1936); vol. 2, ed. R. Cowler
(Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1986).
Swift Corr The Correspondence of Jonathan Swift, ed. D. Woolley, 3
vols. (in progress) (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1999–).
TE The Twickenham Edition of the Poems of Alexander Pope,
ed. J. Butt et al., 11 vols. (London: Methuen, 1938–68).

In the Imitations of Horace, vol. i v , Ep refers to the Epistles and Sat to the
Satires. Unless otherwise indicated, The Dunciad is quoted from the A text
(1729) in TE, vol. v.

xii
 ALEXANDER POPE CHRONOLOGY

1688 Alexander Pope born in the commercial area of the City of

London, 21 May. King James II flees to France, prior to acces-
sion of William III and Mary.
1692 The Pope family move to Hammersmith, outside London.
1698 Alexander Pope’s father acquires house at Binfield, Berkshire,
in Windsor Forest: the family in residence there by 1700. While
living there, Pope meets older men who will serve as literary
mentors, including the retired diplomat Sir William Trumbull,
the dramatist William Wycherley and the actor Thomas
Betterton.
1702 Accession of Queen Anne. Start of the War of the Spanish
Succession (to 1713), with British forces under the command
of the Duke of Marlborough.
1703 Isaac Newton becomes President of the Royal Society (to
1727).
1704 Jonathan Swift, A Tale of a Tub and The Battle of the Books.
Marlborough and the allies gain a spectacular victory over the
French at the battle of Blenheim.
1705 Alexander Pope’s first surviving letters. Close friendship with
Trumbull, a neighbour in the Forest. Has begun work on his
Pastorals.
1707 About this time, Pope meets Martha and Teresa Blount, mem-
bers of the Catholic gentry; Martha was to become his closest
woman friend for the rest of his life.
1708 Final stone laid on St Paul’s cathedral, designed by Sir Christo-
pher Wren.

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 a l e x a n d e r p o p e c h ro n o l o g y

1709 Pastorals and other early work published.

1710 In the wake of the divisive Sacheverell affair, the Tories gain
power under Robert Harley (later Earl of Oxford) and Henry
St John (later Viscount Bolingbroke), who become important
supporters of Pope. Swift begins his Journal to Stella (to 1713).
George Frideric Handel arrives in London and helps to initiate
a fashion for Italian opera.
1711 Essay on Criticism. Addison and Steele begin The Spectator,
runs until 1713 (Pope is an occasional contributor). South Sea
Company launched under the aegis of Oxford. Marlborough
dismissed as commander as part of Tory moves to end the war.
1712 First version of The Rape of the Lock in two cantos. Messiah
appears in The Spectator.
1713 Pope publishes Windsor-Forest, celebrating end of the War
of the Spanish Succession. Addison’s Cato, with prologue by
Pope. By now Pope is familiar with the Scriblerus group,
including Swift, John Arbuthnot, Thomas Parnell and John
Gay. He also is in contact with the leading ministers, Oxford
and Bolingbroke. Contributes to Steele’s Guardian.
1714 The full Rape of the Lock appears in five cantos. Death of
Queen Anne; succession of George I. The Tories lose power
and Whigs dominate national politics for the rest of Pope’s
life.
1715 The Temple of Fame. First instalment of the Iliad translation,
issued by subscription. Bolingbroke flees to France. Jacobite
rising led by the Old Pretender, James Francis Edward Stuart.
Pope friendly with Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (later a bitter
enemy). John Gay, The What d’ye Call It (comedy on which
Pope and Arbuthnot may have given assistance).
1716 Rising put down. Pope family forced to leave Binfield, in the
wake of anti-Catholic legislation, and move to Chiswick, out-
side London. Pope becomes familiar with members of the court
of the Prince and Princess of Wales. John Gay, Trivia. Some
of Pope’s earliest brushes with the rascally publisher, Edmund
Curll, initiating a lifelong war of words.
1717 Death of Pope’s father. Collected Works published, containing
Eloisa to Abelard, Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate

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Lady, and other new poems. Farcical comedy written by Pope,

Gay, and Arbuthnot, Three Hours after Marriage, performed
to a mixed reception.
1718 Pope leases house at Twickenham, his home for the rest of his
life. Death of his Scriblerian colleague Parnell.
1719 Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe, part 1, admired by Pope.
1720 Last instalment of the Iliad. South Sea Bubble, a major finan-
cial crash which has widespread political and social effects.
1721 Pope brings out edition of Parnell’s poems. Robert Walpole
attains power and serves as prime minister until 1742, fre-
quently incurring the criticism of Pope.
1722 Death of Marlborough, unlamented by Pope.
1723 Pope’s edition of the Duke of Buckinghamshire’s works. Jaco-
bite plot involving Pope’s friend Atterbury discovered; the
bishop exiled to France. Pope’s in-laws implicated in Waltham
Blacks affair, a politically charged crime spree in Berkshire and
surrounding counties. Death of Sir Christopher Wren, admired
by Pope.
1725 First instalment of the Odyssey. Edition of Shakespeare. Bol-
ingbroke returns from exile and settles not far from Pope’s
home.
1726 Translation of the Odyssey completed. Swift visits England and
stays with Pope. Gulliver’s Travels published. Voltaire begins
three-year exile in England, where he will meet both Pope and
Swift.
1727 First two volumes of Miscellanies published, including work
by Pope, Swift and other Scriblerians. Swift’s final visit to
England. Death of George I. His son George II ascends the
throne, with Caroline as consort. The Craftsman begins as
a weekly journal of the opposition to Walpole. Death of
Newton.
1728 The Art of Sinking, written largely by Pope, published in third
volume of Miscellanies. The Beggar’s Opera, by John Gay,
performed and scores a major hit. First version of The Dunciad
in three books.

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 a l e x a n d e r p o p e c h ro n o l o g y

1729 The Dunciad Variorum published, with fuller apparatus and

annotation. Edmund Curll, The Curliad, one of many ripostes.
Swift, A Modest Proposal.
1730 Colley Cibber, a frequent butt of Pope, appointed Poet Laure-
ate. Throughout the coming decade Pope grows more closely
involved with the opposition to Walpole’s government, enjoy-
ing friendship with the “Patriot” leaders who stood against
the influence of the court. The Grub-street Journal begins its
career (to 1737), supporting Pope’s stance in literary politics
and satirizing his enemies.
1731 Epistle to Burlington. Death of Defoe.
1732 Miscellanies, fourth volume. Death of John Gay. Death of
Atterbury. Hogarth, The Harlot’s Progress.
1733 First of the Imitations of Horace published (to 1738). Epistle
to Bathurst. Essay on Man, epistles i–iii published. Death of
Pope’s mother.
1734 Essay on Man, epistle iv published. Epistle to Cobham.
1735 Epistle to Arbuthnot, followed by death of Arbuthnot. Epistle
to a Lady. Second volume of Pope’s Works. Curll’s edition of
Pope’s Letters (publication engineered by Pope).
1737 Epistle to Augustus published. Authorized edition of Letters.
Death of Queen Caroline. Theatrical Licensing Act increases
government control over new plays. Samuel Johnson, London.
1738 Epilogue to the Satires brings the imitations of Horace to an
end. Samuel Johnson, London, praised by Pope.
1739 Swift’s Verses on the Death of Dr Swift first published.
1740 Pope’s health grows worse. Samuel Richardson, Pamela,
Part 1.
1741 Memoirs of Scriblerus published under Pope’s direction.
1742 Fourth book of The Dunciad published separately. Henry
Fielding, Joseph Andrews.
1743 Pope publishes complete version of The Dunciad in four
books. Fielding, Jonathan Wild.

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 a l e x a n d e r p o p e c h ro n o l o g y

1744 Pope working on deathbed edition of his works. Dies, 30

May. Buried at Twickenham. Johnson, Life of Richard Savage
(a writer well known to Pope).
1745 Death of Swift. Death of Robert Walpole. Jacobite rising led
by the Young Pretender, Charles Edward Stuart.

xvii
 PAT R O G E R S

Introduction

It would not be quite true to say that Pope has proved a poet for all the ages,
if only because some late Victorians thought him safely dead and buried in
terms of any active presence in the poetry of their day. Even then, however,
Pope refused to lie down, and for the past three hundred years he has shown
surprising resilience in the face of condescension, assumed indifference, or
outright hostility. Recent generations of poets and critics have joined the
scholars in helping to recover some of the ground he had lost. A look at his
reputation as it stood 100, 200, and 300 years ago may help to make the
point.
In the first quarter of the eighteenth century, Pope had seen his career take
off with a series of major poems: An Essay on Criticism, Windsor-Forest, The
Rape of the Lock, and Eloisa to Abelard, which would all be packaged in the
sumptuous collection of the poet’s Works in 1717. Scarcely anyone without
a personal grudge then doubted that a poet of the highest excellence had
arrived on the scene – in the view of most dispassionate observers, the greatest
English writer since Milton and Dryden in the late seventeenth century. A
hundred years later, in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, his position
had undergone serious challenge, but he remained a potent influence for
Wordsworth, and earned the vehement support of Byron:

Neither time, nor distance, nor grief, nor age, can ever diminish my veneration
for him, who is the great moral poet of all times, of all climes, of all feelings,
and of all stages of existence. The delight of my boyhood, the study of my
manhood, perhaps (if allowed to me to attain it), he may be the consolation of
my age. His poetry is the Book of Life.1

This may seem hyperbolic, with its calculated reworking of a tag from the
Roman moralist Cicero in the second sentence. But a similar tribute came
from Byron’s contemporary, the essayist Charles Lamb, when he remarked
that Pope paid the finest compliments ever devised by the wit of man – “Each
of them is worth an estate for life – nay an immortality.”2 Pope’s reputation

1
 pat ro g e rs

reached its low point in the late 1800s. Then, just a hundred years ago, things
began to look up for the poet in the first decades of the twentieth century.
His admirers were not critics who set the blood raging today – figures such
as Austin Dobson and George Saintsbury, whose learning and love of poetry
may be disguised from us by their blimpish personae. But the tide turned
between the two world wars, as poets such as Edith Sitwell and W. H. Auden
recognized Pope’s outstanding technical accomplishments, and scholars such
as George Sherburn began to reappraise his legacy. In the heyday of “New
Criticism”, around the 1940s and 1950s, Pope prospered mightily, enjoying
the esteem of writers like Cleanth Brooks and W. K. Wimsatt; and even the
ranks of Cambridge could scarce forbear to cheer, as these were represented
by influential pioneers of twentieth-century literary analysis such as F. R.
Leavis and William Empson. Pope also gained in public recognition through
the efforts of modern scholarship, especially the imposing Twickenham edi-
tion of his complete poems spearheaded by John Butt from the 1930s to the
1960s, and the massive contributions to Popian study of Maynard Mack
right up to the late 1980s.
But that was then and this is now. Against all expectations, Pope has
made it into the early twenty-first century with very little, if any, loss of
momentum. New approaches in the post-structuralist era have confirmed
just how central a place he holds in the narrative of poetic history. Scarcely
any critical school has managed to sideline his work: all our new terms and
favored concepts turn out to fit Pope’s practice with startling precision. It is
no accident that so many of the shibboleths of modern criticism repeatedly
turn up in the criticism of Pope. Nor, for that matter, that these keywords
have come to the fore in this volume. The reason that the Companion is
organized in part around issues such as identity, gender, the body, the history
of the book, crime, and the other, goes back to a simple fact: Pope’s work
raises these issues in a peculiarly direct and pervasive way. No work of
the time adumbrates the concerns of modern feminism more immediately
than the Epistle to a Lady; no poem dramatizes the march of the literary,
journalistic and publishing profession so richly as The Dunciad. We should
find it hard to name any considerable body of poetry so replete with images
of crime and punishment as the Imitations of Horace. Few writers have
confronted the nature of heroism in the modern world so searchingly as
did Pope in his translations of Homer. If there is a single text in the entire
canon which brought the topic of consumerism and commodification into the
western mind, then it must be The Rape of the Lock – as innumerable modern
readings serve to confirm. Luxury, politeness, effeminacy, private and public
spaces, neuroticism – they all come into question during the course of the
Rape, in a text that lasts less than 800 lines (you could recite it within the

2
 Introduction

span of a half-hour television programme, with commercial breaks between

the cantos.). It is as though Pope had a land line to the twenty-first century
and intuited the nature of our modern obsessions.
With his meticulous attention to detail – the tone and texture of words, the
sound and syntax of verses, the shape of longer poems – Pope repays the kind
of detailed attention that a Companion of this sort is designed to provide. A
love of Pope starts with a love of words, and it is readily accountable that
poets should long have relished the effects he taught himself to achieve. But
his work repays close observation on other grounds, for anyone who wishes
to explore the recesses of the human heart, or to appreciate the comedy of
men and women in their social dance.

Pope’s life
The salient facts of Pope’s life are set out in summary form on pp. xiii–xvii
above, and later essays in this book explore many detailed aspects of
his career. We need to remember first that he did not set out with great
advantages: while this does not affect the intrinsic quality of his poems, the
fact does reinforce our sense of the great human achievement which his life
as a writer represented. He was born a Roman Catholic in 1688, the year that
an alliance of political, military and church leaders drove the last Catholic
monarch from the English throne. His father, a retired London merchant
already well into middle age, had to move his family out of the city because
of harsh new measures directed against the papist community under the new
monarchs, William III and Mary II. An invalid from his early years, the boy
grew up in Windsor Forest, about thirty miles from the centre of the capi-
tal. There he developed a taste for poetry, communed with nature in what
was then a wholly rural environment, and acquired some elderly mentors,
including the retired diplomat Sir William Trumbull, the dramatist William
Wycherley, and the actor Thomas Betterton. They encouraged his first liter-
ary efforts, culminating in a precociously brilliant set of Pastorals organized
around the four seasons. Pope may have started on these as early as the age of
sixteen, but they did not appear in print until 1709, just before his twenty-first
birthday, in a volume of miscellanies put out by the greatest publisher of the
age, Jacob Tonson. Having gained attention and started to make a mark in
the London literary world, Pope soon followed up with the dazzling epigram-
matic wit of An Essay on Criticism (1711). These works brought him to the
notice of two Whig authors who now dominated the scene, Joseph Addison
and Richard Steele, then at the height of their popularity through two inno-
vative journals, The Tatler and The Spectator. However, Pope was tending to
gravitate towards an alternative camp, including his fellow-members in the

3
 pat ro g e rs

high-spirited writers’ workshop known as the Scriblerus Club, Jonathan

Swift and John Gay. This group had close links with the Tory ministry which
had come to power in 1710. Pope would maintain an intimate friendship in
later years with the leaders of this government, the moderate Robert Harley,
Earl of Oxford, and his uneasy colleague in a sometimes uneasy coalition,
the mercurial Henry St John, Viscount Bolingbroke. In 1712 came the first
version of The Rape of the Lock; then Windsor-Forest, a work on the long-
awaited Peace in 1713 which blends descriptive, historical, and political
elements; and finally in 1714 the expanded Rape, a mock-heroic poem uti-
lizing all of the young man’s accumulated poetic skills. It exhibits wit in lan-
guage, poise in tone, elegance in its simulation of heroic diction, ingenious
parody of epic structure, and devastating powers of social observation.
But Pope’s golden youth came to an abrupt halt. In 1714 Queen Anne
died, the ministry collapsed, and the accession of the Hanoverian kings left
the Tories on the political sidelines for almost fifty years. The unsuccess-
ful Jacobite rising of 1715/16 involved a number of Pope’s friends and co-
religionists. When the dust settled, Oxford found himself in the Tower of
London on charges amounting to treason, while Bolingbroke was exiled in
France and stripped of his honours. Swift, too, went into a kind of exile as
Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin, safely remote from the day-to-day
battles of party politics at Westminster. Meanwhile Pope’s own family was
hounded by the measures taken against Catholics as a result of the Jacobite
scare, and they had to leave their cherished home at Binfield for the more
humdrum (if not yet suburban) surroundings of Chiswick, to the west of
London. For the next few years Pope concentrated on his ambitious plan to
transform Homer’s epic, The Iliad, into a contemporary classic by re-laying
its ancient and in some sense “primitive” outline on the template of Augustan
poetics. Opinions have always differed about the degree of his success, but
there is no doubt of the commercial coup which the translation delivered.
Pope negotiated strict terms from the publisher Bernard Lintot, and gained
enough subscribers to ensure that he was set up for life. As a result he could
disdain patronage by the court in a way that no other considerable writer
had managed for a very long time. His position at the head of English letters
was further ratified in 1717 when a sumptuous volume of collected poems
appeared. This contained a few new items, notably Eloisa to Abelard, but
for the most part it represented a summation of major poetry written before
the death of the Queen.
Pope’s own father died in 1717 and not long afterwards he took his aged
mother to live with him in a new house in the Thames-side village of Twick-
enham. Here he was to spend the last quarter-century of his life, and “Twick-
enham” was to become as familiar an address in the public mind as Gad’s

4
 Introduction

Hill for Dickens or Ayot St Lawrence for Bernard Shaw. Strictly the villa did
not embody a new structure but rather two rebuilt cottages, planted on five
acres of rented land, and the house was a conscious miniaturization of the
great Palladian mansions of the aristocratic friends he had begun to acquire.
Pope gave even more attention to the garden, which included a lawn by the
riverside and a parcel of land at the back, across the road towards Hampton
Court. To connect these two segments Pope built his famous subterranean
grotto, and along with the garden’s own features and ornaments this served
as a personal and family shrine, dedicated to the poetic and political values
he held most dear.
In his new “retirement” at Twickenham, Pope continued to work on
Homer, having taken on a version of the Odyssey, and on Shakespeare,
whose works he edited in 1725 with moderate distinction. Around 1722–3
he had been distracted by the fallout from the Atterbury affair, yet another
Jacobite plot and yet another banishment of a friend in the person of Fran-
cis Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester, and ringleader of the conspiracy. By the
later 1720s Pope had gone over a decade without composing a single original
poem to rank with the major works of his early twenties. A new burst of
energy may have been inspired partly by a renewal of his intimacy with Swift.
The Dean paid his only return visits from Dublin in 1726 and 1727, bringing
with him some dangerous contraband in the shape of Gulliver’s Travels, an
explosive work whose origins went back to the convivial days of collabo-
rations in the Scriblerus Club. So, too, did Peri Bathous, a collective work
of Scriblerian fun at expense of bad writers, published in 1728, where Pope
took the leading authorial part. Soon afterwards came the first version of The
Dunciad in three books, a poem long meditated but only recently actualized
by Pope. Unlike The Rape of the Lock, this leaves its mock-epic plot behind
as it portrays the fate of literature and learning in a modern Babylon. Little
escapes the torrent of satiric invention as it envelops the court of George II,
the ministry of Robert Walpole, the church of cozy latitudinarian divines,
the theatrical establishment led by Colley Cibber (an actor–manager and
playwright eventually advanced to the throne of the dunces), the world of
education and scholarship symbolized by the bullying pedant – as Pope saw
him – Richard Bentley, classicist and would-be improver of Milton. At the
heart of the plot come the doings of a tribe of so-called dunces, Pope’s name
for writers, journalists and publishers, whose combined activities threaten to
sink literature into a squalid branch of commerce, marketing and scandalous
gossip.
The government of Robert Walpole became one of Pope’s prime targets
in the 1730s, even though the poet and the prime minister appear to have
maintained decent personal relations. In the early part of the decade Pope

5
 pat ro g e rs

hit a rich vein of form with two series of poems he initiated. First came
the Moral Essays (1731–35), four richly allusive and skilfully argued dis-
courses on topics such as the use of riches. There followed the Imitations of
Horace (1733–38), taking on a range of contemporary social issues. Though
following the poems of Horace quite closely, Pope injects a vein of sharp
localized commentary on individuals, couched in a language that is often
spiky and abrasive. Also published in separate instalments was An Essay on
Man (1733–34), issued anonymously to confuse and distract Pope’s critics.
It incorporated his most extensive disquisition on philosophic, cosmic, and
social themes, and entered into a Europe-wide debate over the nature of the
good, the beneficence of nature, and the rôle of the individual in society. For
generations it remained one of the poet’s most admired and most quoted
works, although in recent years the Essay has slid towards the margins of
most readers’ interests. After this there was time only for a revised version
of The Dunciad, with a new fourth book devoted mainly to some cultural
crazes of the day. By 1740 all of Pope’s old friends in the Scriblerian gang
had passed on, with the lone exception of the distant Swift, who had in any
case sunk into senile decay. Pope himself suffered a number of illnesses that
ultimately crushed his fragile constitution. He died in May 1744 at the age
of fifty-six.

Summary of essays
Many of the Cambridge Companions to Literature have placed a strong
emphasis on readings of individual works written by the author under dis-
cussion. This volume by set purpose departs from that scheme, as it is orga-
nized topically. There are two main reasons for this decision. First, while
there is no shortage of commentary on poems such as The Rape of the Lock,
the epistles To a Lady and To Arbuthnot, or The Dunciad, it seems desirable
to set these well-known works within the context of the full range of Pope’s
poems. By this means we have attempted to ensure that items such as the
Imitations of Horace (e.g. Sat, ii.i) receive their share of notice. We have also
been able to give a little more space to the Essay on Criticism and the Essay
on Man – once regarded as central planks in Pope’s achievement – than many
recent accounts of his work have done. Second, Pope’s oeuvre constitutes a
kind of sustained enterprise, or magnum opus in which the separate parts
make up an interactive system. (Something far less true of writers like Samuel
Johnson or Alfred, Lord Tennyson.) The shape of this volume is meant to
allow readers to establish fruitful connections between different texts, as
these poems are exposed to a shifting light from one essay to another. More
than once it happens that the same passage of verse is analyzed by two or

6
 Introduction

three different contributors and we have left it to readers to make their own
cross-references and comparisons.
We begin with two essays which examine facets of Pope’s literary person-
ality. In recent years writers on the eighteenth century have devoted consid-
erable attention to issues of identity. A neat summation of this concept is
provided by Dror Wahrman: “an essential core of selfhood characterized by
psychological depth, or interiority, which is the bedrock of unique, expres-
sive individual identity.”3 But students of Pope had begun some time ago to
explore the poet’s sense of self, in the wake of Maynard Mack’s Northcliffe
Lectures, delivered in 1972. An essay entitled “‘The Least Thing like a Man in
England’”, reprinted in Mack’s volume, Collected in Himself (1982), focused
interest on Pope’s complex response to his medical history. Mack brought to
light some of the stratagems Pope devised to cope with illness, along with the
shrivelled and invalid body which his ailments had left him.4 One book that
followed up on this lead was Helen Deutsch’s Resemblance and Disgrace
(1996), which went into many aspects of the poet’s life as they expressed the
limitations of his condition – his deformity, his poor health, his miniaturized
stature, his Catholicism, and his exposure to public ridicule through hostile
prints and writings. All these things made Pope an outsider in his society,
and to some extent a feminized and aberrant individual with reduced agency
and authority – a state that his lifetime achievement as a poet could mitigate
but not wholly control. In her essay for this volume, Deutsch shows how
Pope “transformed his marginality into a source of creative self-reflection,
self-possession, and self-legitimation.” She also examines the various pro-
jections of self which the poet adopted, as “the young would-be libertine
and love poet, the dutiful translator and ambitious emulator of the clas-
sics, the mature moral arbiter and ultimately the great negator of English
satire.”
In fact, the privacies of day-to-day existence invade the best known work
more often than readers generally recognize. David Nokes, a novelist as well
as a critic, has written biographies of Swift, John Gay, and Jane Austen. Here
he considers a number of Pope’s friends and enemies, such as respectively
Jonathan Swift and Edmund Curll, not forgetting ambiguous cases such as
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Joseph Addison, who moved in and out of
favor. For Pope, as Nokes tells us, “the desire to establish around himself a
circle of virtuous men, to correspond with constantly, became a vital element
in his desire to fix forever the image of his life as a virtuous crusade.” Nokes
shows, too, how the relationships fed into poems such as the Epistle to
Arbuthnot and The Dunciad.
The two succeeding essays examine the form and style of Pope’s verse.
His masterly technique, once a favorite topic for critics, has suffered

7
 pat ro g e rs

comparative neglect over the past twenty years. John Sitter, author of major
studies including The Poetry of Pope’s “Dunciad” (1971), asks pertinent
questions here about the manner in which we should read Pope, that is to
say aurally, in order to get the right noises sounding in our heads as we
encounter the highly polished and regular-seeming texture of his verse. As
Sitter points out, “Deciding how to perform a line, if only for our own ears,
will require decisions about meaning and psychological emphasis.” Sitter
emphasizes, too, the varied voices which Pope projects in his work. In allied
fashion Cynthia Wall, a critic who has edited The Rape of the Lock and has
also charted the literal and imaginative spaces of eighteenth-century litera-
ture, shows how the structure of the couplet enables Pope to fix meaning and
suggest connotations. She argues that “within the strict form of the heroic
couplet [in The Rape of the Lock] the verbs are wriggling and the images
escaping,” while Eloisa to Abelard “employs the couplet structure and off-
rhymes to generate an unremitting pattern of confinement and rebellion that
resists final reconciliation.” Both these essays show that there are abundant
ways to get behind the apparently rocking rhythm and smooth syntax to
find the complex inner core of the poetry.
Another development, clearly visible over the last few decades, is a renewed
interest in Pope’s translations of the two great epics of Homer, The Iliad and
The Odyssey. This process has gone alongside a major revaluation of the
output of his great predecessor John Dryden, whose versions of writers such
as Virgil, Juvenal, and Ovid have come to seem some of his most signifi-
cant “creative” works. A major advance in taking the Homeric translations
seriously came with R. A. Brower’s Alexander Pope: The Poetry of Allu-
sion (1959). However, the main starting point for this reappraisal was the
appearance of the Twickenham edition of these poems in 1967 (TE, vii–x),
an enterprise in which Mack again took a leading part. Since then numerous
scholars have brought a series of insights to the text of Pope’s work. A key
figure has been Steven Shankman, both through his book Pope’s “Iliad”:
Homer in the Age of Passion (1983), and through his own edition of Pope’s
translation (1996). In this volume, Shankman reveals the ways in which
Pope’s experience as a translator affected his entire career, and in which the
presence of Homer permeates his oeuvre. Even the mock epics he composed
provide a parallel with the aims of the ancient heroic poet, whose “dual
achievement of glorifying through poetry and yet at the same time analyzing
the sources of psychic and social disorder finds expression in The Rape of the
Lock as well.” Equally, much debate in the recent past has gone on around
the nature of Pope’s putative “Augustanism,” or in broad terms the extent to
which he approved of the civilization of ancient Rome, whose major writers

8
 Introduction

served as some of his principal models. Two key documents here are books by
Howard D. Weinbrot, Augustus Caesar in “Augustan” England: The Decline
of a Classical Norm (1978) and Howard Erskine-Hill, The Augustan Idea
in English Literature (1983), which take rather different approaches and
reach different conclusions. In his essay for this volume Weinbrot, author
of another well-known study, Alexander Pope and the Traditions of Formal
Verse Satire (1982), investigates some of the further complexities in Pope’s
relation to the admired (but not always sacrosanct) masters of ancient poetry,
especially Horace. As the essay argues, “Pope learned to compartmentalize
and to continue his affection for Greek and Roman literary achievement.
In each case, however, he distinguished between often morally or politically
unacceptable content, and generally brilliant literary talent that had given
pleasure for thousands of years.”
From his youth Pope cared greatly for poets of the Elizabethan and
Jacobean era, including Edmund Spenser, John Donne, and Ben Jonson.
This aspect of his work remains something of a black hole in the critical
legacy, and David Fairer’s essay here is designed to plug the gap. In addition
to writing several studies on Pope, Fairer has carried out extensive work on
Thomas Warton, the critic whose History of English Poetry (1774–1781)
helped to create the canonical eighteenth-century view of earlier literature
and on Joseph Warton, brother of Thomas, whose Essay on the Genius and
Writings of Pope (1756–82) did most to influence the tide of critical taste.
In the present volume, Fairer considers a number of ways in which Eliza-
bethan poetry (broadly defined) left its mark on Pope. As his essay illustrates
in depth, Pope “valued humanist argument with its sceptical wit and its
respect for individual experience and intelligent conscience. But it is clear
from his poetry that he also relished another side of Renaissance culture,
the rich symbolic language that the Elizabethan world in particular offered
him.” My own essay on Pope in Arcadia seeks to trace some of the ways in
which the poet’s use of pastoral reflected his own early experience in rural
Berkshire, and to show how this vision of spiritual harmony was shattered
by reverses in political and personal life.
Both of the next pair of essays confront the wider public debates which
raged in Pope’s time. Brian Young has specialized in the intellectual and
theological controversies of the early Enlightenment. Here he situates Pope
in the crucial matrix of issues which would soon come to be defined as
“ideological” in nature. The essay shows how Pope moved from one oppo-
sitional stance, associated with his roots in the Catholic community, to
one centered on the “Patriot opposition” directed against the Prime Min-
ister Robert Walpole and on the freethinking philosophies of his friend and

9
 pat ro g e rs

mentor Lord Bolingbroke. From this exposed position, casting him as a

heretic in terms of political and religious norms of his day, Pope was “saved”
near the end of his life when William Warburton, “a Whig cleric who sub-
sequently shaped Pope’s posthumous reputation,” reinterpreted his poems
along the lines of Anglican orthodoxy. After this comes an essay by Howard
Erskine-Hill, whose many important contributions to the field include Poetry
of Opposition and Revolution: Dryden to Wordsworth (1996), as well as
some widely read studies of the Jacobite climate in which much of Pope’s
work was performed. Here he turns to the latter half of the poet’s career,
starting with the Atterbury crisis of 1722–3, and moving into the 1730s,
when Pope was associated with the opposition to Robert Walpole, nurtured
by the so called “Patriot” ideology. Fixing on William Fortescue, a lawyer
who mediated between Walpole and the opposition, Erskine-Hill carries out
the most thorough investigation yet attempted of the role that this impor-
tant figure in Pope’s life played in literary politics. The enquiry prompts a
wider conclusion about the public and private aspect of the poetry: “As with
other aspects of his personality, [Pope’s] political identity was made up of
many different components, all registered in the subtle modulations of his
poetry.”
Some wider social and cultural matters occupy the remaining essays. In the
first of these Paul Baines investigates an undertow of references to crime and
punishment in the poems. Baines, author of The Complete Critical Guide to
Alexander Pope (2000), has made a special study of this aspect of the age.
Starting from the insight that “Punishment was more physical, and more
visible, in Pope’s day than it is in ours,” he reads a number of major texts
with an eye for the presence of penal concerns in the texture of the verse,
and illustrates some of the ways in which satire especially was construed as
an alternative mode of social retribution – Pope’s works indeed constituting
a “supplement to the public laws.” After this Malcolm Kelsall, well known
for his work in the field and author of The Great Good Place: The Country
House and English Literature (1997), analyzes the landscapes and estates
which formed a part of Pope’s life (often as the object of his own skills as
a garden designer, as with his own small villa at Twickenham) and which
became the subject of major poems, such as the Epistle to Burlington. While
there were certainly ideological components within Pope’s notion of taste,
we should not dismiss the pleasure principle which was also at work: as
Kelsall says, “To emphasise the elements of moral allegory in the Popeian
landscape is not to deny the keen sensitivity of his eye for natural beauty. It
was this exquisite sensibility which led his friends to value his contribution
to the planning of greater demesnes.”

10
 Introduction

In the following essay, we encounter another ubiquitous element in the

materials which went to make up Pope’s imaginative world – money. Cather-
ine Ingrassia, author of relevant studies including Authorship, Commerce,
and Gender in Early Eighteenth-Century England (1998), places Pope’s own
monetary history in the context of the Financial Revolution which Britain
was undergoing in his lifetime, in the years just before and after the South
Sea Bubble of 1720. She then moves on to a detailed survey of the “poetic
response,” in the shape of the extended treatment of commercial and finan-
cial matters in the Imitations of Horace and elsewhere. As Ingrassia argues,
Pope’s success in promoting his Homer subscription, and his skill in tak-
ing control of his own literary properties, enabled him to escape the fate of
his victims: “Because of his carefully achieved wealth, he does not have to
become ‘the bard . . . | Who rhymed for hire’.” The insights of this essay
provide a useful overlap with some of those found in the next section of
the volume. This concerns Pope’s dealings with the publishing industry of
his time, a topic revolutionized by David Foxon’s study, Pope and the Early
Eighteenth-Century Book Trade (1991). The work of editing Foxon’s lec-
tures for the press fell to James McLaverty, a leading authority in the area,
and author of Pope, Print, and Meaning (2001). In his essay for this volume
he examines the history of Pope’s contacts with publishers such as Jacob Ton-
son, Bernard Lintot, and Edmund Curll, and discusses the means by which
Pope was able to achieve a situation of power within the book industry,
unparalleled by any previous writer (and by very few in the succeeding three
hundred years). As McLaverty notes, his damaging critiques of mercenary
practices in the trade went with an astonishing capacity to use this same
trade for his own purposes: “Although, with his attacks on Grub Street, his
hostility to individual booksellers, and his sense of the unreliability of print,
Pope can be thought of as an enemy to the book trade, few writers made
better use of its resources.”
Gender is an inescapable issue in modern literary studies, and Pope has
proved to be a peculiarly fruitful source of material for critics interested
in this subject. Valerie Rumbold, the author of a standard book, Women’s
Place in Pope’s World (1989), gives a full account of the manner in which
the poet’s “work was both energized and constrained by gender.” She reveals
the conflicting pressures on the poet as he sought to achieve standing in the
largely masculine world of letters, while in some ways placed by his personal
limitations in a position of feminine dependency (an obvious link exists here
to the essay by Helen Deutsch). Yet he was also responsible for some radical
and even subversive versions of gender: in her analysis, Rumbold points to
poems “explicitly critical of the patriarchal limitations imposed on women,

11
 pat ro g e rs

notably Verses to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady, Eloisa to Abelard, ‘To

a Lady with the Works of Voiture.’” These were among the most popular of
Pope’s work with eighteenth-century women readers, an important segment
of the poet’s clientele. Another growth subject in recent decades has been
the area of medicine and the body, and again Pope happens to provide an
especially interesting case study. The founding work here was impressively
done by Marjorie H. Nicolson and G. S. Rousseau, with “This Long Disease,
My Life”: Alexander Pope and the Sciences (1968). The essay written for the
present volume by Rousseau, a specialist in the interface between literature
and medicine, starts from the poet’s physical disabilities, and contends that
“It is unthinkable that such a ‘Carcass’ (as he metonymically often referred to
his deformed body) would not take a psychological toll on his selfhood and
literary identity.” This essay connects feelings about identity and the body
to developments in neurology, and sees the relevance of medical advances
to “a poet of selfhood like Pope, whose infirm body was paradoxically the
source of both pain and power, blemish and asset.” Again this recalls some
motifs which came up at the opening of this volume.
The last essay reaches out beyond conventional appraisals of Pope as
a representative “Augustan” figure to chart some of the wilder shores of
the eighteenth-century imagination. Laura Brown has written widely on the
period, including a bravely contentious exercise in “rereading literature,”
Alexander Pope (1985). Here she interrogates the familiar modern notion of
the “other” as it emerges in Pope’s work. In Brown’s formulation, the other
focuses primarily on “the representation of women or of indigenous or non-
European peoples in literary texts,” for instance the passage on the “poor
Indian” in the first epistle of the Essay on Man. She analyzes this excerpt
to bring out the multiple series of “intersecting perspectives on indigenous
peoples” which are set in motion by Pope’s verse. In the poet’s work we
find “a rich and pervasive engagement with alterity – an engagement that
privileges the unfamiliar, the non-civilized, and the non-European, and that
simultaneously evokes an inversion of traditional hierarchy, a destabiliza-
tion of systems of order or continuity, and a questioning of fundamental
assumptions of value and meaning.”
Such claims provide a bracing note on which to end a volume of this
kind, intended to encourage informed reading, as well as stimulating fresh
and unprejudiced thinking about the issues which Pope brings to our con-
sciousness. The contributors all have a deep commitment to understanding
his poetry as it speaks to the present age. They do not all share Pope’s atti-
tudes, and they certainly do not all agree with one another. What they do
have in common is a delight in returning to Pope, as this promotes a renewed

12
 Introduction

engagement with his extraordinary qualities as a poet – his range, his finesse,
his articulacy, and his capacity to surprise and disturb.

NOTES

1. “Observations on ‘Observations’: A Second Letter to John Murray, Esq.” (1821)

(first published in Thomas Moore, The Works of Lord Byron: With His Letters,
and Journals, and His Life, 17 vols. [London: John Murray, 1832–35]).
2. Conversation reported in William Hazlitt, “Of Persons one would have Wished
to have Seen” (first published in New Monthly Magazine, January 1826).
3. Dror Wahrman, The Making of the Modern Self: Identity and Culture in
Eighteenth-Century England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), p. xi.
4. Maynard Mack, Collected in Himself: Essays Critical, Biographical, and Bib-
liographical on Pope and some of his Contemporaries (Newark: University of
Delaware Press), 1982, pp. 372–92.

13
 1
HELEN DEUTSCH

Pope, self, and world

Behold it is my desire, that my adversary had written a book. Surely I would

take it on my shoulder and bind it as a crown unto me.
(Job, xxxi, 35)
I have heard Mr. Richardson relate that he attended his father the painter on a
visit, when one of Cibber’s pamphlets came into the hands of Pope, who said,
“These things are my diversion.” They sat by him while he perused it, and saw
his features writhen with anguish; and young Richardson said to his father,
when they returned, that he hoped to be preserved from such diversion as had
been that day the lot of Pope.
(Samuel Johnson, Lives of the Poets, iii, 188)

Alexander Pope, eighteenth-century England’s most prominent poet and his

generation’s most frequently portrayed celebrity, dominated the emergent lit-
erary marketplace as the first self-supporting, non-playwriting professional
author (shrewd enough to rely on an aristocratic coterie of subscribers to
get his start, yet savvy enough to supervise almost every aspect of the pub-
lication process), while fascinating his audience as a spectacle of deformity.
Characterizing the life of a wit in the preface to the first published vol-
ume of his Works (1717) as “a warfare upon earth,” and complaining as
a well-established poet and celebrity in his 1735 Epistle to Arbuthnot of
“this long disease, my life,” which poetry and friendship served to ease,
this protean master of the heroic couplet suffered a war between an excep-
tional mind and a body lambasted as “at once resemblance and disgrace”
of humanity’s “noble race.” Barely four and a half feet tall when grown, in
Voltaire’s words “protuberant before and behind” (current medical science
attributes his deformity to childhood tuberculosis of the spine, otherwise
known as Pott’s disease, contracted from a wet nurse, while his contempo-
raries also considered trampling by a cow and excessive study as potential
causes), socially disenfranchized for his Catholicism, Pope transformed his
marginality into a source of creative self-reflection, self-possession, and self-
legitimation. His life’s work was the ultimate couplet of deformity and poetic
form.
Mocked early on as “the ladies’ plaything” for the best-selling translation
of Homer appealing to a non-aristocratic and female audience (a serious

14
 Pope, self, and world

attempt at post-Miltonic epic refracted in his mock-heroic mirror The Rape

of the Lock) that enabled him to declare himself “indebted to no priest or peer
alive,” Pope began his career as a generic virtuoso, modeling the monument
to poetry and his own version of classical authorship of his early Works –
beginning with his self-proclaimed masterpiece of versification, the Pastorals
and concluding with an English and Christian version of Ovid’s Heroides,
Eloisa to Abelard – after the Virgilian progression from eclogue to epic.1
By the end of his career, Pope had turned all genres, most importantly epic,
into satire, casting himself in the Epilogue to the Satires (1738) as a hyper-
masculine epic hero rejecting Horatian politeness and embodying solitary
moral integrity in an age of beautiful social hypocrisy. Radically conservative
in his final nostalgic Tory critique of British economic and imperial progress,
fundamentally modern in his exploitation of the book trade, Pope embodied,
negotiated, and redefined the ambiguities of his age. Pope had bid farewell
to satire in the Epilogue, but he returned for one last performance: when
the curtain falls at the end of his final poem (revised for half of his career),
that grand mock-epic of Grub Street and modern ignorance, The Dunciad,
and “universal Darkness buries all,” Pope’s couplet art finally triumphs by
envisioning art’s destruction.
The genre that distinguishes Pope’s art through all its phases is the
portrait – whether we consider the irreverent depiction of John Dennis as
Appius in the Essay on Criticism (585–6), or the vitriolic portrait of Lord
Hervey as Sporus, neatly encapsulated in the Epistle to Arbuthnot as “one
vile Antithesis” (325), or his rival the laureate and famous fop Colley Cibber
asleep in the lap of the goddess Dulness (Dunciad, iii, 1–2). Such portraits
stud his work like jewels, complex and often emotionally fraught attempts to
capture the complexities of another human being in the couplet’s suspended
paradoxes. Alexander Pope seemed destined for the margins: he was Catholic
at a time of intense social and economic discrimination, of uncertain class
origin though possessing great social aspirations, and, most strikingly, in his
own words, “the Least Thing like a Man in England” (Corr, i, p. 89). Yet he
was at the center of a world that we might figure to ourselves as a portrait
gallery that featured the poet both as master painter and visual curiosity. His
“libel’d Person” and “pictur’d Shape” (Arbuthnot, 353) – distorted in carica-
ture in cheap printed pamphlets, idealized in neoclassical grandeur in busts,
frontispieces, and on mock-ancient medals – circulated throughout the liter-
ary marketplace of eighteenth-century London, a teeming and contentious
universe which he dominated as “King of Parnassus.”
To try to paint Pope’s portrait, to consider the relationship of “Pope, self,
and world,” is to enter into a battle for control of his image originating
in the poet’s own time but still continuing throughout over two centuries

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of critical response, in which Pope is marked out from the order his own
words construct.2 These reactions reveal Pope, who took on a variety of
guises over the course of his career – the young would-be libertine and love
poet, the dutiful translator and ambitious emulator of the classics, the mature
moral arbiter, and ultimately the great negator of English satire – as excluded
from what he celebrates, or implicated in what he rejects. Whether he is
Leslie Stephen’s monkey pouring boiling oil on his victims, William Empson’s
cripple admiring a natural order he cannot enter at the end of the grand
georgic vision of empire in Epistle to Burlington, Maynard Mack’s self-
styled “feisty little alien . . . in the country of the normals,” or the aspiring
bourgeois hypocrite of Peter Stallybrass and Allon White, immersed in the
Grub Street culture he disdains, Pope becomes, to use his phrase for Atossa
in the Epistle to a Lady, one who “is whate’er he hates and ridicules,” while
doomed to love – like the lovelorn “future Bard” summoned by the grieving
heroine of Eloisa to Abelard as best suited to “paint” the grief he himself
feels – at a distance. Yet the couplet partner to this need to fix Pope, to
objectify him and his intent, is career-long changeability: he is as variable
and hard to “hit” as the women over whose portraits he puzzles in the
opening of Epistle to a Lady, which begins with the casually uttered and
recollected words of Pope’s friend Martha Blount, “Most Women have no
Characters at all” (2). In short, Pope’s portraits reflect and refract himself.
Who is more than he an “Antithesis,” split between a “Cherub’s face” and
a beastly body (Arbuthnot, 325, 331)? Who else, like Atossa in To a Lady
(118), called his life “one warfare upon earth”? As this essay will reveal, Pope
often employed even more self-conscious and self-referential examples.
If the portrait was Pope’s favorite genre, he was – as the proud monument
of the 1717 Works and the full embrace of the personal voice afforded by
the Horatian imitations of the 1730s demonstrate – his own favorite subject.
Despite, or perhaps because of his career-long focus on himself, Pope remains
one of the most elusive authors in the English canon. This paradox becomes
even more complex when we consider the fact of Pope’s deformity, which
marked him apart from the intricate interrelations of nature and art as his age
understood them, “where,” as he wrote in his loco-descriptive masterpiece
Windsor-Forest, “Order in Variety we see, | And where, tho’ all things differ,
all agree” (15–16). How then are we to understand Pope’s insistence on
making nature and art identical – both in the Essay on Criticism, when Virgil,
attempting original poetry, finds that “Nature and Homer were . . . the same”
(135), and in the Essay on Man’s vindication of the ways of God to man, in
which “All Nature is but Art, Unknown to Thee” (i, 289)? Deformity served
as Pope’s trademark, as key to originality in a career of literary imitation,
as proof of self-ownership in a world of economic circulation.3 In this essay

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I shall, as Maynard Mack undertook to do in his late writings on Pope,

explore deformity in Pope as a key to subjectivity. The paradox of art and
life in Pope’s work also articulates the ways in which stigma shaped him as
he responded to it, turning blunders into beauties, abjection into the portrait
of authority.
Pope provokes readers to expose the painter of portraits accurate enough
to imprison their subjects as himself an object marked by an order at once
natural and divine, thus confirming their own sense of the world as intelligi-
ble and coherent. (We should recall that during this period, physical defor-
mity was still believed to be a sign of divine punishment or warning, as well
as the legible index of a corrupt soul, or as Francis Bacon put it “the con-
sent between body and mind” [Essay 44, “Of Deformity,” in Essays and
Counsels, Civil and Moral, {1612}], even as these early modern beliefs were
challenged by both the growth of a new science that saw monsters as part
of nature, and an emergent sense of personal interiority – one which Pope’s
psychological portraits helped his culture to imagine – as an invisible depth
that belied the body.) Even, or perhaps especially, at the level of the lived
body, a body even the poet’s own mother believed to be marked by excessive
love of literature, Pope’s poetry emerges from the intersection of creative
imagination and shameful objectification, of self and world, of life and art.
The greatest paradox any reader of Pope must reckon with is that he wants
art to embody the truth about himself. Perhaps this is because his body had
to bear the burden of so much falsehood. The poet inscribed the words from
Job with which we began on the flyleaf of the four volumes of pamphlet
attacks he had collected and bound, preserved like the “flies in amber” of
trivial enemies he marveled over in the Epistle to Arbuthnot, and exhibited
in the notes of The Dunciad as well as the barrage of proper names that
stud his later satire with asterisks. The ugly particulars of these volumes and
the satiric responses they provoke serve as our emblem for Pope’s will to
self-portraiture at all costs: rather than ignore or reject the attacks of his
adversaries, Pope displays them as the mark of his distinction, the source of
his subjectivity. If these printed assaults were, as Pope claims in the anecdote
which serves as this essay’s epigraph, his “diversion” – and the portraitist
Jonathan Richardson’s son glimpses here, in the telling disparity between the
poet’s statement and his pained expression, a truth consistently on display
to Pope’s readers – they provoked an art that was profoundly serious play.
Such play in Pope’s poetry alternates between satiric self-defense and acts
of self-exposure; we can see its rhetorical roots in the poet’s early letter to
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, in which Pope flirtatiously imagines, in an
effort to move Lady Mary to follow his example: “If Momus his project had
taken of having Windows in our breasts, I should be for carrying it further

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and making those windows Casements: that while a Man showed his Heart
to all the world, he might do something more for his friends, e’en take out,
and trust it to their handling” (Corr, i, p. 353). In his first Horatian imitation,
such transparency exposes the poet’s flaws:

I love to pour out all my self as plain

As downright Shippen or as old Montagne . . .
In me what Spots (for Spots I have) appear,
Will prove at least the Medium must be clear.
(Sat, ii.i, 51–6)

We might read this passage as a prime example of the ways in which Pope
deploys the rhetoric of personal deformity as proof of his universal virtue –
the spots in the medium, like the printed marks on the page, are proof of his
complete self-disclosure and sentimental transparency.4 But such frankness is
also informed by a tradition of philosophical skepticism of which Horace and
Montaigne are important examples. From this perspective, Pope creates not
complete transparency but rather a paradoxically elusive depiction of what
James Noggle calls “a specially poetic, cleansed, fluid version of himself,
apparent only in contrast with the ordinary self represented as the ‘spots’ or
personal flaws that appear in it . . . [A] self so cleansed is a nothing, empty
if not for what it bears, virtuous only in invisibility.” The ultimate Popean
couplet, as Noggle would have it, holds in tension not deformity and form
but rather the poetic self and any attempts to define it.5 Pope is never more
elusive, in other words, than when he is telling us everything.
Yet we should also recall that, beginning with the young author’s mockery
of the older critic Dennis, or perhaps even earlier with an anecdote recorded
by Joseph Spence of the poet as schoolboy penning a satire on his master and
being beaten for his pains, Pope provoked the attacks that justified a satire
advertised as virtuous self-display. “And with the Emblem of thy crooked
Mind | Mark’d on thy Back, like Cain, by God’s own Hand, |Wander, like
him, accursed through the Land,” ends one lampoon by two of Pope’s famous
targets, Lord Hervey and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (Verses Address’d to
the Imitator of the First Satire of the Second Book of Horace (1733), lines
110–12). Branded for life, Pope makes a career out of the indelibility of insult.
What Didier Eribon has recently argued about insult and the formation of gay
identity might equally apply to Pope’s life-long effort to rewrite marginality
as authority.6 Arguing that insult creates a subject who is “destined for
shame,” forced to don a mask of otherness that can’t be removed, Eribon
sees literature as a field of struggle in which the person objectified by insult
can speak in a self-created voice, thus rupturing the “world as it is” that has

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rendered him alien. We might also recognize Pope in Eribon’s claim that the
internalization of insult creates a melancholy for “normal society” which is
articulated as rejection.
Pope’s embrace of the “not unpleasing Melancholy” that characterizes his
lot at the end of An Epistle to Arbuthnot also shades the unrequited love
triangles of the Pastorals and the sympathetic mirroring of poet and episto-
lary heroine in the dark anthropomorphic landscape of the lovelorn Eloisa
at the beginning of his career, while animating his unique spin on Horatian
retirement of the 1730s. By turning his rented Twickenham estate on the out-
skirts of London into a symbol of moral self-possession and freedom from
material attachment, Pope transforms the legal ban on Catholics owning
property or living within the city limits into a sign of his personal distinc-
tion. These qualities also infuse the grand condemnation of British society in
his Epilogue to the Satires and irradiate the “universal darkness” at the end
of The Dunciad. We might consider that the great philosophical Opus Mag-
num – a unfinished project that included a “system of ethics in the Horatian
way” in the form of the four Moral Essays (also termed “Epistles to Several
Persons”), along with that hybrid of poetry and philosophy, An Essay on
Man – which crowned Pope’s career in the 1730s, arose in part out of a need
to justify his satiric attacks on poor scribblers in the 1728 Dunciad. We may
then realize how even the larger currents of Pope’s poetic progress were put
into motion by a dynamic of insult and response. Pope, in other words, was
constantly aware of himself as framed – as a person whose meaning had
already been partially determined by commonplace, burdened by the book
of his adversary. This does much to explain his career-long preoccupation
with the portrayal of character, in which he would increasingly insist upon
“touching persons” with the bite of satire.
When David Garrick, the most famous actor of the eighteenth century,
glimpsed Pope at the theatre two years before his death in 1744, he gave us
an emblem of this dynamic:

When I was told . . . that POPE was in the house, I instantaneously felt a
palpitation at my heart; a tumultuous, not a disagreeable emotion in my mind.
I was then in the prime of youth; and in the zenith of my theatrical ambition. It
gave me a particular pleasure that RICHARD was my character, when POPE
was to see, and hear me. As I opened my part; I saw our little poetical hero,
dressed in black, seated in a side box, near the stage, and viewing me with a
serious and earnest attention. His look shot and thrilled, like lightning, through
my frame; and I had some hesitation in proceeding, from anxiety, and from
joy. As RICHARD gradually blazed forth, the house was in a roar of applause;
and the conspiring hand of Pope showered me with laurels.7

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Haunting this exchange of looks between the poet and the actor, and no
doubt informing the “particular pleasure” that Garrick experiences at seeing
Pope in the audience for this performance, is the awareness that both are
using the same script – that of Shakespeare’s King Richard III, that most
infamous of hunchbacks who defines himself at the outset as unfit for love,
“nor made to court an amorous looking-glass”:

Cheated of feature by dissembling Nature,

Deform’d, unfinish’d, sent before my time
Into this breathing world scarce half made up –
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me, as I halt by them –
(Richard III, i.i, 19–23)

Richard is the ultimate showman, who by “descant[ing] on [his] own defor-

mity,” improvises upon the script that nature has written for him. “Deter-
mined to prove a villain,” he is also a source of Francis Bacon’s influential
maxim in his essay “Of Deformity” (the text of which was often quoted in
attacks on Pope) that “Deformed persons are commonly even with nature:
For as nature hath done ill by them; so do they by nature: being for the
most part, (as the Scripture saith), void of natural affection; and so they
have their revenge of nature” (Essay 44, The Essays or Counsels of Francis
Bacon [1612]). The character, the poet, and the actor here unite in a common
performance of the body’s burden as the source of art.
I want to conclude by pointing briefly to several places in Pope’s poetry
where, like Richard in a virtuous key, he performs deformity as a self-
conscious violation of proper decorum (and here I hark back to the Latin
root of the word “decens,” both what is fitting and what is ornamental),
and as defacement of an earlier self-portrait. Each of these instances unites
an early moment in Pope’s poetic career with a later one, each offers in the
process a revised sense of the poet’s relationship to a self that is experienced
at once as freeing and unsettlingly elusive.
The first is Pope’s epigraph to his imitation of Horace’s Epistle ii.ii:
“Ludentis speciem dabit et torquebitur” [he will give the appearance of play-
ing and be turned/distorted/tortured on the rack.] In the context of the Latin
original “torquebitur” takes on the neutral meaning of “turn,” as the line
in full reads “He will give the appearance of playing and turn, as one who
now dances the Satyr, now the boorish Cyclops.” This elusive play reminds
us of the “diversion” of Pope’s earlier brand of self-exposure, an artful elu-
siveness here thematized as performance. Aptly enough, in the body of his
English text, Pope translates these lines with a self-conscious quotation from

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his Essay on Criticism, (362–3): “But Ease in writing flows from Art, not
Chance, | As those move easiest who have learn’d to dance” (178–9). His
italicization of “torquebitur” in the Latin text on the opposite page reminds
us of his epigraph, and undermines the youthful sprezzatura of his earlier
insistence on the invisibility of poetic labor. These ironically quoted lines
seem to respond not just to the “you” of the previous line in the poem, who
is tricked into thinking good poetry only “Nature and a knack to please,”
but also to Horace and the younger self for whom emulating the ancients
was all. At this moment of self-scrutiny, Pope embraces disease as the pain
of a laborious art that refuses to conceal itself, and that in a tacit revision of
Horace refuses, at the end of the poem, decorously to abandon the stage of
life to the young without judging their folly.
The next is a brief moment in Pope’s self-portrait in his last Horatian
poem, Epistle i.i, a poem that seems to abandon satire for a different kind
of moral exemplarity. Housing “with Montagne now, or now with Locke”
(26), Pope in his self-confessed changeable folly is at once skeptical of Chris-
tian tenets and free-ranging in his thought (Montaigne), while rigorously
logical and overly accepting of the proofs of Christianity (Locke). He is also
living a continual flux between the active (Montaigne’s social criticism) and
contemplative (Locke’s investigation of the mind),8 a flux complicated fur-
ther by the unbalanced contrast between the poet’s penchant to “Mix with
the World, and battle for the State, | Free as young Lyttelton” (28–9), a
prominent Whig opposition statesman, and his habit to “Sometimes, with
Aristippus, or St. Paul, | Indulge my Candor, and grow all to all” (31–2).
Further dividing his first opposition (between the moderns Montaigne and
Locke) with another doublet (balancing ancient pagan Aristippus and early
Christian Paul) announcing affinities with both the hedonist philosopher
Aristippus, whom, Horace’s Epistle i.i. (17) tells us, all situations suited due
to his infinite adaptability, and his inverse St. Paul, who was “all things to
all men” in his unwavering desire to convert them to the true faith, Pope is
at once a devout Christian and a pagan sceptic, a self unchanged by circum-
stance and a chameleon.
This latter intermittent penchant to “indulge my Candor, and grow all
to all,” is shadowed by Pope’s earlier condemnation of Wharton – the first
and most powerful portrait in that investigation of the “characters of men,”
the Epistle to Cobham, “Grown all to all, from no one vice exempt, | And
most contemptible, to shun contempt” (194–5).9 The line which concludes
this passage from Pope’s Ep, i.i, “And win my way by yielding to the tyde”
(34) completely reverses Horace’s original, “I attempt to subject the world to
me, not myself to the world.” Pope stresses here not his stoical integrity but

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his ideological and historical fluidity, not his satiric authority but his indis-
tinguishability from the human objects of his condemnation. When at the
poem’s conclusion Pope’s addressee Lord Bolingbroke (the Essay on Man’s
“Guide, Philosopher, and Friend,” and most important influence) interrupts
the poet’s ruminations with a laugh (a laugh that reminds us of the cruel
propensity of the eighteenth-century public to mock cripples), the confident
certainties of the Essay’s theodicy, in which all aberration is seen as part
of the divine order, are rewritten as the subjective inconsistencies that limit
all human thought and moral judgment. Pope’s status as a moral exemplar,
through the essayistic shifts of Epistle i.i, comes to rest neither in his satiric
righteousness nor his philosophical confidence but rather in his frank con-
sciousness of his own flawed and unknowable self.
Thus we should not be surprised when in one of the most recent crit-
ical readings of Pope’s Essay on Man, one which stresses the poet’s self-
consciously ironic manipulation of received wisdom throughout a poem too
often dismissed as complacent, Helen Vendler pauses over Pope’s perhaps
most famous and oft-quoted portrait, in which he enlists a dizzying array of
echoes from Renaissance literature (most notably Hamlet), in its magisteri-
ally balanced paradoxes:

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;

The proper study of Mankind is Man.
Plac’d on this isthmus of a middle state,
A being darkly wise, and rudely great:
With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side,
With too much weakness for the Stoic’s pride,
He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest,
In doubt to deem himself a God, or Beast;
In doubt his Mind or Body to prefer,
Born but to die, and reas’ning but to err;
Alike in ignorance, his reason such,
Whether he thinks too little, or too much:
Chaos of Thought and Passion, all confus’d;
Still by himself abus’d, or disabus’d;
Created half to rise, and half to fall;
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of Truth, in endless Error hurl’d:
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!
(ii, 1–18)

Aptly describing this passage as a kind of divine creation of Man, one that
“render[s] graphically the mobility of mind as it operates at full tilt,” Vendler
goes on to read the lines as Pope’s ultimate self-portrait.

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 Pope, self, and world

Detached from all reference to his own biography, Pope is not, here, the warm
friend, the social companion, the scourge of dullards, or the pious son; rather,
he is looking at himself in his interior solitude. Before his eyes, in a secular Ecce
Homo, he places himself: the strange genius-cripple, the frustrated yearner, the
inquisitive skeptic, the Catholic deist, the gothic classicist, the ill sensualist, the
self-deluding self-satirist, the baffled inquirer, the language-tethered visionary.
He is bold enough to think that what he sees in himself can be generalized to
the rest of us.10

It is testament to the power of Pope’s poetry that he is able to write himself,

in all of his flawed and labile contradiction, as both human and exemplary.
Through the workings of polished art, his unnatural deformity becomes our
own.
But this is too neat an ending for Pope, who concluded his career, as we’ll
recall, on a dramatically oppositional note. We might end our reflections on
“Pope, self, and world” by considering the epigraph to the final 1744 version
of The Dunciad:

Tandem Phoebus adest, morsusque inferre parantem

Congelat, et patulos, ut errant, indurate hiatus.
(OVID.)

[But Phoebus comes to his aid, and checks the monster, ready for the devouring
grasp; whose expanded jaws, transformed to stone, stand hardened in a ghastly
grin.]

The passage from which these lines are taken reads as follows:

Here, as the head lay exposed on the alien sand, its moist hair dripping brine,
a fierce snake attacked it. But at last Phoebus came, and prevented it, as it
was about to bite, and turned the serpent’s gaping jaws to stone, and froze the
mouth, wide open, as it was.
The ghost of Orpheus sank under the earth, and recognised all those places
it had seen before; and, searching the fields of the Blessed, he found his wife
again and held her eagerly in his arms. There they walk together side by side;
now she goes in front, and he follows her; now he leads, and looks back as he
can do, in safety now, at his Eurydice.
(Ovid, Metamorphoses, xi, 70–86)11

Here Pope, whose head circulated freely through the visual culture of Lon-
don, portrays himself with a powerfully self-divided emblem that evokes
both satire triumphant and satire disarmed. He is Orpheus, torn to pieces
by the Bacchantes he spurned (shades of the Dunces’ violent attacks), whose
head continued to sing even after being severed from his body. But he is
also the monstrous serpent threatening that singing head, whose satire has

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the power to bite (unlike Sporus in Arbuthnot, who can only spit, spew,
and “mumble of the game he dare not bite”), frozen for eternity in a pose
of attack. Tellingly, Pope chooses to omit the powerful fantasy that follows
these lines: a dream of losing the self in union with a beloved, and of falling
out of step with the couplet’s metre, looking beyond deformity’s static and
solitary frame.

NOTES
1. On the Works as a monument to love and fame, see Vincent Caretta, “‘Images
Reflect from Art to Art’: Alexander Pope’s Collected Works of 1717,” in Poems in
their Place: The Intertexuality and Order of Poetic Collections, ed. Neil Fraistat
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986), pp. 195–233.
2. For a fascinating overview of this dynamic, see Blakey Vermeule, The Party of
Humanity (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001).
3. Helen Deutsch, Resemblance and Disgrace: Alexander Pope and the Deformation
of Culture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996).
4. Deutsch, Resemblance and Disgrace, pp. 38–9.
5. James Noggle, The Skeptical Sublime: Aesthetic Ideology in Pope and the Tory
Satirists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 147, 154.
6. Didier Eribon, Insult and the Making of the Gay Self, trans. Michael Lucey
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004), p. xv.
7. David Garrick, as quoted in Percival Stockdale, Memoirs of the Life and Writings
of Percival Stockdale 2 vols. (London, 1809), ii, pp. 153–4.
8. Brean S. Hammond, Pope and Bolingbroke: A Study of Friendship and Influence
(Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1984), p. 121; Thomas E. Maresca,
Pope’s Horatian Poems (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1966), p. 179.
9. Dennis Todd, Imagining Monsters: Miscreations of the Self in Eighteenth-
Century England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), p. 257. Todd
also elucidates the way in which Pope confuses Horace’s orderly oppositions
between the active and contemplative lives in this passage, leaving the reader
and himself unconvinced of his ability to “project himself effortlessly into
opposite extremes,” and preparing us for the tonal shift of the next passage
(pp. 256–7).
10. Helen Vendler, Poets Thinking: Pope, Whitman, Dickinson, Yeats (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), p. 28.
11. Translated by A.S. Kline, and available at etext.virginia.edu/latin/ovid/ trans/
Metamorph11.html Toc485520962.

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 2
D AV I D N O K E S

Pope’s friends and enemies:

fighting with shadows

Pope never found it difficult to identify the moral values he defended: “To
v i rt u e o n ly and h e r f r i e n d s , a f r i e n d ”, he proclaimed in the first
of his Imitations of Horace (TE, iv, p. 17), making the claim specific and
only the application general. Where others wrestled with the semantics of a
precise meaning, Pope had a startling simplicity. “Ask you what Provocation
I have had? | The strong Antipathy of Good to Bad” (TE, iv, p. 324). His
desire to claim a similar authority for his friendships made explicit a tendency
enunciated by Swift:

I have often endeavoured to establish a Friendship among all Men of Genius,

and would fain have it done. They are seldom above three or four Contempo-
raries and, if they could be united, would drive the world before them.
(Corr, ii, p. 199)

For Pope the desire to establish around himself a circle of virtuous men,
to correspond with constantly, became a vital element in his desire to fix
forever the image of his life as a virtuous crusade. In his villa at Twickenham
everything, from the motto Libertati & Amicitiae over the door to the placing
of ornaments in the grotto, was designed to give his moral sentiments an
outward and visible form.
From the first Pope’s versifying abilities were accompanied by a desire to
establish friendships less with contemporaries than with men who, though
advanced in years and decayed in style, could prove helpful to an aspiring
poet. William Wycherley and William Walsh were among the first with whom
Pope cultivated a deferential literary manner, praising Wycherley for the
brevity of his wit “like those who have most Money, are generally most
sparing of either” (Corr, i, p. 12), and soothing Walsh by aiming (hopelessly)
to become “a Critic by your Precepts, and a Poet by your Example.” (Corr,
i, p. 20). With the patronage of such men he was content to live at Binfield,
celebrating the virtues of the spot with Horatian dignity.

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 dav i d n o k e s

Happy the Man, who free from Care,

The Business and the Noise of Towns,
Contented breaths his Native Air,
In his own Grounds.
(Corr, i, p. 68)

When, some years later, he came to London and needed a town-companion

he fell in with Henry Cromwell, thirty years his senior, who favoured (in
no particular order) snuff, nosegays, and ladies of easy virtue. He and Pope
played a kind of literary one-upmanship, with Cromwell maintaining his
dazzling, if slightly shop-soiled lexicon of Statius, Homer, and ladies of the
night, and Pope developing a style of “talking upon paper” about classical
literature and domestic dogs.
When writing on his canine theme, Pope could maintain an easy
superiority; when the subject came to sexuality he felt more vulnerable. At
twenty-three, referring to his friends Martha and Teresa Blount, he said how
gladly he would give “all I am worth, that is to say, my Pastorals for one of
their Maidenheads, & my Essay for the other” (Corr, i, p. 137). To his friend
John Caryll, he felt able to speak even more frankly and, writing with his wit
pared down to cover his embarrassment, he asked for the recommendation
of a prostitute.
If you know One particular Nymph that can carry herself and me, better than
usually, whom you can give upon yr word, pray acquaint me, that I may wear
her Chain forthwith; I fancy my Size and Abilities may qualify me to Match
her Monkey very well.1

John Caryll was someone he could always speak to with a minimum of fuss.
A few months earlier he told him he was “satisfied in [his] conscience” he had
behaved honourably in the troubles over the Rape of the Lock and the Essay
on Criticism. “I dare stand to posterity in the character of an unbigoted
Roman Catholic and impartial critic” (Corr, i, p. 151). He may, perhaps,
have expected his words to carry to John Caryll senior, his oldest friend and
fellow Catholic with whom he kept up a closeness that lasted all his life.
By this time he was well embarked upon his London literary career in
which the cast lists of friends and enemies have firm, emblematic qualities.
John Gay was an impetuous juvenile whose career needed careful supervi-
sion and if, in recompense, Gay should assist him, attacking those inveighing
against his growing reputation, it was a happy coincidence. In the dedica-
tion to The Mohocks (1712) Gay delivered a gratuitous snub to the critic
John Dennis after he had abused Pope’s Essay on Criticism: three years later
Ambrose Philips was singled out in The Shepherd’s Week for the same rea-
son. “It is to this management of Philips, that the world owes Mr. Gay’s

26
 Pope’s friends and enemies

Pastorals,” said Pope, keen to show off his eager disciple’s work (Corr, i,
p. 229). Should this element of partnership ever fail, Gay was there to take
the flak: before the opening of Three Hours after Marriage Gay boasted of
having received the assistance of “two of his friends” (Pope and Arbuthnot)
in writing it; when it failed, he alone accepted full responsibility: “I will (if
any Shame there be) take it all to myself” (Corr, i, p. 388). Not until much
later would Gay risk things of which Pope might not approve and Swift’s
suggestion for “a Newgate pastoral, among the whores and thieves” (Corr,
i, p. 360) took thirteen years from hint to happening. Gay was always a slow
worker.
Throughout the later 1720s Gay’s friendship with Pope cooled so much
that Swift wrote in 1730, “Mr Pope talks of you as a perfect Stranger” (Corr,
iii, p. 96). But when Gay was on his deathbed in 1732 Pope mysteriously
reappeared to reclaim the career he had initiated. He wrote to John Caryll
(senior) that he “no sooner saw the death of my old friend Mr Gay, whom I
attended in his last sickness (it was but three days), but [Martha Blount] fell
very ill, partly occasioned by the shock his death gave her.” The phrasing
here is ambiguous: George Sherburn comments, tentatively “one must feel
that Pope does not here intend to say that he was at Gay’s bedside when
he died. Possibly Miss Blount was” (Corr, iii, p. 337). In life, Pope always
presented himself as Gay’s indispensable friend; in death, he became his
trusted curator. “Our poor friend’s papers are partly in my hands,” he wrote
to Swift, “I will take care to suppress things unworthy of him” (Corr, iii,
p. 365). Swift wholeheartedly agreed: “I think it is incumbent upon you to
see that nothing more be published of his that will lessen his reputation”
(Corr, iii, p. 361). Gay’s merits, suitably refashioned, were proclaimed at
Westminster Abbey as the personification of childlike innocence.

Of manners gentle, of affections mild;

In wit, a man; simplicity, a child . . .

In the Epistle to Arbuthnot he presents Gay as the perfect model of

neglected genius.

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.
(TE, iv, pp. 306–7)

This may not have been the truth about Gay’s life; but it was a very important
myth for Pope to cling to.

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 dav i d n o k e s

Dennis erupted into Pope’s life almost simultaneously with Gay. In May
1711 Pope published his Essay on Criticism including these lines:

But Appius reddens at each Word you speak,

And stares, Tremendous! with a threatning Eye,
Like some fierce Tyrant in Old Tapestry.
(TE, i, pp. 306–7)

The comments were designed to remind its readers that John Dennis, most
famous critic of the age, wrote execrable tragedies (Appius and Virginia),
uttered extravagant adjectives (“Tremendous!”), and had a violent temper.
The jibe is gentle and, given the Essay’s subject, might have been greater
had Dennis simply been ignored. At fifty-three Dennis was the author of
numerous well-respected works, but personally was immensely irritable with
the tendency to read poetry “as if it were a legal brief” (Life, p. 182). Pope’s
lines evidently irritated him and, a month later, his Reflections on the Essay
appeared displaying both his incisive mind and utter lack of charity. He
swatted away a few genuine errors and concluded: “As there is no Creature
so venomous, there is nothing so stupid and impotent as a hunch-back’d
Toad.” He concentrated on Pope’s physical appearance, “the very Bow of
the God of Love.”

This little Author may extol the Ancients as much and as long as he pleases,
but he has reason to thank the good Gods that he was born a Modern. For had
he been born of Graecian Parents, and his Father by consequence had by Law
the absolute Disposal of him, his Life had been no longer than that of one of
his Poems, the Life of half a Day. (Life, p. 184)

Until Dennis wrote, Pope was essentially an optimistic young man of

twenty-three with enormous talent and a keen sense of the world before
him. Taunts about his physical shortcomings were laughed off as merely ver-
bal and, though painful, were turned to his advantage. But this very public
branding was a reminder for the rest of his life that, for all the mellifluous
beauty he created, it was as a “hunch-back’d Toad” that he was known in
society. He tried to laugh the attack off, protesting to Caryll that if he’d
known Dennis would react so badly “his name had been spared” and won-
dering at Dennis’s fury for lines “which only describe him subject a little
to colour and stare on some occasions” (Corr, i, p. 121). But he got Gay
to pay Dennis back immediately in the dedication to The Mohocks, and
took the further opportunity afforded by the opening of Addison’s tragedy
Cato for which he wrote the prologue. In his Remarks on Cato Dennis had
complained that the “great success” of this “very faulty Play” foretold the
ruin of the stage. Pope seized the opportunity to pay him back in a wicked

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 Pope’s friends and enemies

satire as a careful act of friendship to Addison; but Addison, aware of Pope’s

growing reputation, asked Steele to write to him wholly disapproving of his
“manner of treating Mr Dennis.” When he thought it “fit to take notice”
of Dennis’s remarks he would do it in a way “Mr. Dennis shall have no just
Reason to complain of” (Corr, i, p. 184). Gradually Dennis slipped out of
focus until, in 1721, Pope sent him a brief note confessing sorrow for the
“differences” between them which, his latest editor records, is “to the credit
of both men.”2
With Addison Pope’s relationship went in the other direction, beginning
in friendship, deteriorating rapidly and leaving an unpleasant aftertaste.
Addison – writer, politician and diplomat – had everything his talent and
connections could bestow. His writings, from his poem The Campaign to
his tragedy Cato, became the models for correct expression, while The Spec-
tator informed his admirers, of both sexes, what to talk about in social
situations. From his seat at Button’s Coffee House Addison did not dictate
but rather (as in Steele’s letter above) let his minions do that for him.

Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,

And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer.
(TE, iv, p. 110)

Addison was among Pope’s early friends but by the time of Cato both were
aware the relationship was breaking up, no doubt assisted by Pope’s epigram
On a Lady who P-st at the Tragedy of Cato. Addison made a last attempt, if
not to win Pope over, at least to neutralize him. “You gave me leave once to
take the liberty of a friend” he wrote, “in advising you not to content your-
self with one half of the Nation for your Admirers” (Corr, i, pp. 196–7).
The final break between them came over the Iliad. Late in 1713 Pope desired
Addison to “look over” the first book of his translation for which he was
canvassing subscriptions; Addison declined having recently, he declared,
designed to print a version by Thomas Tickell. This was the first Pope had
heard of this rival version, done several years previously, while Tickell was at
Oxford; but the printer John Watts noted that though “the first book of the
Iliad was in Tickell’s handwriting” it was “much corrected and interlined by
Addison.”3 The first volume of Pope’s Iliad appeared in June, followed just
two days later by Tickell’s, but the results of any contest were not long in
doubt. Lintot dashed off a note to Pope at Binfield, telling him “Mr Tickles
Book . . . is allready condemn’d here and the malice & juggle at Buttons is
the conversation of those who have spare moments from Politicks” (Corr, i,
p. 294).
Addison died in 1719, but Pope’s revenge was long and slow. Sixteen
years later he contrived, through a network of intermediaries, to leak letters

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to the pirate publisher Edmund Curll, in order to justify following up with

a “corrected” version of his own correspondence in which several letters
were revised, re-assigned or fabricated. Awkward phrases were removed
and, along with them, awkward or inopportune friends. Before he replaced
Theobald’s name with Cibber’s in his expanded version of The Dunciad, Pope
went further in his correspondence, trimming the role of Caryll and substi-
tuting Addison. One wonders at his sentiments towards both men when
he fabricated a snub to Dennis (“he has written against every thing the
world has approv’d these many years”) in a supposed letter to Addison writ-
ten more than twenty years after the date assigned to it. “So ingeniously
done . . . it is Pope’s masterpiece in this kind” writes Sherburn (Corr, i,
p. 183). When upon the discovery of Caryll’s original letters Pope’s tactics
were revealed it did much to blacken his reputation, which, though under-
standable, is to be regretted. That he did wrong is certain; that Addison’s
dealings over the rival Iliad were deeply underhand has unfortunately been
forgotten.
On the intellectual and financial proceeds from the Iliad Pope came to have
a wide circle of acquaintances, among them Lord Burlington, with whom
he shared architectural visions. For some months in 1717, buoyed up by the
excitement of his lordship’s extensive renovations of Burlington House in Pic-
cadilly, he thought seriously about building a matching palazzato just behind
it, “on the same Plan & Front with Lord Warwick’s.” But the cost of Colen
Campbell’s proposals (“200 pound above what I am pretty well assured I can
build the same thing for”) made him think again (Corr, i, p. 516). Gay too
had a lively friendship with Burlington, or he did until the Beggar’s Opera;
in January 1732 he wrote innocently to Swift of Pope’s searching for his
lordship “within whose walls I have not been admitted this year & a half
but for what reason I know not” (Swift Corr, iii, p. 452). Pope maintained
a diplomatic neutrality between the two, seeking the advice of Burlington’s
lawyer, after the banning of Polly (sequel to The Beggar’s Opera), to mini-
mize the dangers to The Dunciad. “I could be glad of the decisive opinion
of Mr Fazakerly,” he wrote, otherwise it might be “impracticable to publish
the thing before Mr G.’s and I am grown more prudent than ever, the less I
think others so” (Corr, iii, pp. 4–5).
He was less prudent in some of his friendships and Bolingbroke inspired
in him an admiration bordering upon hero worship. Pope described Boling-
broke to Spence as “something superior to anything I have seen in human
nature”; noting the appearance of a comet, he speculated that “it might pos-
sibly be come to our world to carry him home” (Anecdotes, i, pp. 274–5).
Bolingbroke came home at last, to England not to heaven, in 1725 having

30
 Pope’s friends and enemies

paid the penance of his vainglorious flourish as the leader of the Jacobite
rebels in 1715, and retired to his estate, rechristened Dawley Farm, where
he made a show of enjoying the life of bucolic retreat. “I overheard him
yesterday,” Pope wrote, “agree with a Painter for 200l. to paint his country-
hall with Trophies of Rakes, spades, prongs” (Corr, ii, p. 503). It was a
painful descent from his meteoric rise to sole control of the government for
just four days in 1714: “The Earl of Oxford was remov’d on tuesday, the
Queen dyed on Sunday . . . what a world is this, & how does fortune banter
us?” (Swift Corr, ii, p. 47). The world might rebuke him as a dangerously
impulsive “man of mercury” but for Pope, Bolingbroke remained an heroic
figure living the life of virtue.
After Bolingbroke it was Francis Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester and leader
of the English Jacobites, who was captured and imprisoned following the
failed conspiracy of 1722. Walpole engineered a show trial for him in the
House of Lords at which Pope gave evidence for which he considered his
own residence in England might be ended. He wrote to Atterbury in the
Tower that he was “every day less and less fond of it,” considering “a friend
in exile” like “a friend in death, one gone before where I am not unwilling,
nor unprepared to follow” (Corr, ii, p. 167). The Lords voted eighty-three to
forty-three for Atterbury’s perpetual banishment and on 9 June 1723 a ship
bore him to Calais where, waiting unseen in an inn, was Bolingbroke, his
exile having just been terminated. “On learning of his presence, Atterbury
is reported to have commented, with a grim smile, ‘Then I am exchanged!’”
(Life, p. 402). For both these men Pope put up a certain personal show
of defiance, but was nevertheless keen to preserve his good standing with
the government. Only a fortnight after the publication of Gay’s Polly his
Dunciad Variorum appeared and was presented to the King by Walpole
himself, a piece of such good fortune that Arbuthnot commented “Mr Pope
is as high in favour as I am affraid the rest are out of it. The King upon
the perusal of the last edition of his Dunciad, Declard he was a very honest
Man” (Swift Corr, iii, p. 226). Whatever his claims to the contrary, Pope
managed to secure tolerable relations with men of all kinds.
With women, though, he had more difficulty. Bitterly sensitive of his physi-
cal appearance he was clumsily defensive, offering an exaggerated old-world
gallantry to mask desires which, if exposed, needed just a hint of ridicule to
curl up into hate. The woman who most fully exposed these feelings was
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu whom Pope first met in 1715, three years
after her marriage. Together he, she and Gay composed a set of up-to-the
minute “town eclogues” which ridiculed the fond hopes of several ladies
of the court. The smallpox which Lady Mary contracted shortly afterwards

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seemed to some an appropriate revenge, but it only heightened Pope’s admi-

ration. He took what for him was the extraordinary step of exacting physical
revenge on Curll, who had published their Court Poems, by placing an emetic
in his drink and then boasting of it in print. By the summer of 1716, when
Lady Mary accompanied her husband as British envoy to Constantinople,
Pope was fairly smitten; it needed only her departure for his passion to burst
forth in epistolary form. The further away she went, the stronger grew his
desire. “I foresee,” he wrote,
that the further you go from me, the more freely I shall write, & if (as I earnestly
wish) you would do the same, I can’t guess where it will end? Let us be like
modest people, who when they are close together keep all decorums, but if
they step a little aside, or get to the other end of a room, can untye garters or
take off Shifts without a scruple. (Corr, i, p. 384).

For two years he addressed Lady Mary with all kinds of erotic whimsy,
culminating, on her homeward journey, with a lengthy romantic tribute to
the innocent pastoral lovers who were killed in each other’s arms by a freak
lightning storm near Stanton Harcourt. Where Pope was sentimental Lady
Mary was blunt, and she attempted to indicate this difference between them
with some answering couplets on the Stanton Harcourt pair.
Who knows if ’twas not kindly done?
For had they seen the next year’s sun,
A beaten wife and cuckold swain
Had jointly curs’d the marriage chain;
Now they are happy in their doom,
Fo r P o p e h as w ro t e u p o n t h e i r to m b
(Corr, i, p. 523).

Shortly after her return there was a break between them for which no
factual cause has been assigned, though this story, told by Lady Mary’s
granddaughter Lady Louisa Stuart, offers a kind of explanation:
At some ill-chosen time, when she least expected what romances call a declara-
tion, he made such passionate love to her, as, in spite of her utmost endeavours
to be angry and look grave, provoked an immoderate fit of laughter; from
which moment he became her implacable enemy.4

Though both Maynard Mack and Valerie Rumbold reject this as a factual
version of the rift between Pope and Lady Mary, both print it, agreeing that
the fit of laughter, if nothing else, accurately pinpoints a sudden switch of
tone. Rumbold lists twenty places where Pope attacks Sappho, Lady Mary’s
literary namesake, with a truly venomous hatred. In his later poems only

32
 Pope’s friends and enemies

her friend Lord Hervey (Sporus) is treated with more loathing as an effete,
epicene thing.

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.
(TE, iv, p. 119)

In this case, however, Lady Mary had the last laugh. Showing a friend around
her apartment late in life, she pointed to her commode decorated “with . . . the
works of Pope, Swift and Bolingbroke” whom she said she had known well:
“They were the greatest Rascals” she said, “but she had the satisfaction of
shitting on them every day.”5
This cloacal reference brings us to The Dunciad in which Pope settles
several literary disputes in similarly excremental fashion. There is Curll,
whose victory in the urinating competition of Book ii is accompanied by
some of the wittiest (and wickedest) notes of the poem. “His rapid waters in
their passage burn” (ii, 176) is, after several learned pot-shots at emendatory
critics “said to be Mr. Curl’s condition at that time” from which Scriblerus
(alias Pope) concludes the word burn cannot be correct, for “every lover of
our author will conclude he had more humanity, than to insult a man on such
a misfortune or calamity, which could never befall him purely by his own
fault, but from an unhappy communication with another.” Lewis Theobald,
hero of the first Dunciad, published Shakespeare Restored in 1726, the year
Pope finished editing Shakespeare, making it clear Pope’s work had been not
only “dull” but also sadly inaccurate. Anointing Theobald as the hero of The
Dunciad was wickedly appropriate since much of the fun in the poem is at the
expense of single letters; his name appears variously as Tibbald, Theobald or
even Mr. T for, as the first note reminds us, “the neglect of a Single Letter”
is no trivial matter, “the alteration whereof . . . is an Atchivement [sic] that
brings honour.”
The four-book Dunciad of 1743 is a very different poem; a vision of chaos
not a praise of folly, presided over not by Theobald but by the arch dunce
Colley Cibber. Pope had known and mocked Cibber for years, ever since the
farce Three Hours after Marriage (1717) when he, Gay and Arbuthnot had
Cibber, acting Plotwell, say lines reflecting on himself. The two had numerous
other spats until, in 1742, Cibber published a sixty-page Letter . . . Inquiring
into the Motives that might induce [Mr Pope] in his Satyrical Works, to be so
frequently fond of Mr Cibber’s name. In particular, Cibber recalled a drunken
evening twenty-five years earlier at a house of “carnal recreation”, when

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 dav i d n o k e s

Pope’s “little-tiny Manhood” had been tempted by a “smirking Damsel” to

essay the “fit of Love”. After waiting for a while in an adjacent room, Cibber
“threw open the Door upon him, where I found this little hasty Hero, like
a terrible Tom Tit, pertly perching upon the Mount of Love!” Such was his
surprise he “fairly laid hold of his Heels” and dragged him away and, on
being upbraided for his action by a noble lord, replied:

Consider what I have done was in regard of the Honour of our Nation! For
would you have had so glorious a Work as that of making Homer speak elegant
English, cut short by laying up our little Gentleman of a Malady, which his
thin Body might never have been cured of? (Life, p. 779)

Pope took revenge the only way he could and when, a few months afterwards
his new Dunciad was revealed, Cibber was sitting on the “gorgeous seat”
previously filled by Theobald (ii, 1).
The greatest literary friend to be associated with Pope is Swift, though.
Twenty years his senior, Swift lived most of his life in Ireland which was
no doubt very fortunate for their friendship; closer acquaintanceship would
surely have ended it, as it ended all Swift’s other friendships, even that with
Tom Sheridan. The two men first met in 1713 and developed their friendship
at meetings of the Scriblerus Club during the last months of the Tory admin-
istration. When Swift came over to England in 1726 to deliver Gulliver’s
Travels he stayed with Pope but left when his host grew ill, lest the extrav-
agance of entertaining “if it be only two bits and one sup more than your
stint”(Corr, ii, p. 384) should be more than he could bear. The following
year Swift planned a return trip: “Going to England is a very good thing,”
he wrote, “if it were not attended with an ugly circumstance of returning
to Ireland.” He came in April, full of hopes, but within weeks these all
were ended. He had fraught meetings with Bolingbroke while Walpole con-
firmed his grip on power and, in September he received a letter containing,
he thought, news of his loved companion Stella’s death. “The last Act of Life
is always a Tragedy at best,” he lamented (Swift Corr, iii, p. 123), stealing
away to London and thence to Ireland, leaving Pope a letter which, when
he read it made him feel “like a girl”. He felt bitterly regretful that Swift
“could think [him] self easier in any house than in mine,” and threatened
to visit Swift in Ireland and act “as much in my own way as you did here
in yours”. His irritation though soon passed and he wrote in early 1728
promising Swift the dedication of The Dunciad and telling him “I believe we
should be fit to live together” (Corr, ii, pp. 447–8, 480).
Once Swift was safely back in Ireland this last became a favourite fantasy;
“Would to God we were together for the rest of our lives!” he wrote in

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November, which became “I now as vehemently wish, you and I might walk
into the grave together” (Corr, ii, p. 522; iii, p. 365) on Gay’s death in 1733.
Usually these phrases, no doubt sincere, were used to cloak other, more
urgent, meanings as when Pope wrote “the Fame I most covet indeed, is
that, which must be deriv’d to me from my friendships,” accompanying a
request for the return of letters which he wished to publish, though without
seeming to do so. “Believe me” he wrote in August 1736, “great geniuses
must and do esteem one another, and I question if any others can esteem
or comprehend uncommon merit” (Corr, ii, pp. 447–8; iv, p. 28). Swift,
bafflingly evasive, used irony to unsettle his English friend and sent him the
manuscript of Verses on the Death of Dr Swift to be printed in England.
Pope was so mystified and embarrassed by the direct “lies” that it contained
(for example, “To steal a hint was never known | But what he writ was
all his own” being directly stolen from Denham’s Elegy on Cowley) that he
edited out several couplets before forwarding it to the press. The resulting
Verses sold several thousand copies and he hoped Swift would not “dislike
the liberties” he had taken, believing “the latter part of the poem might be
thought by the public a little vain.”6 But Swift did dislike them, and insisted
on publishing his own, unexpurgated Dublin edition. It must have caused
him some amusement, as well as irritation, to have his irony so thoroughly
missed.
Throughout Pope’s life his closest friends were the Catholic families of
the Carylls and the Blounts of Mapledurham. At first it was Teresa whom
Pope most affected and wrote playfully suggestive letters to, as for example
this, from summer 1717: “I know no Two Things I would change you for,
this hot Weather, except Two good Melons” (Corr, i, p. 409). In his later
life, particularly after the death of his mother, it was Martha (Patty) Blount
that he relied upon. It was to her he wrote, a few weeks before his death “I
love you upon unalterable Principles” (Corr, iv, pp. 510–11). The question
of whether these “unalterable Principles” might lead to marriage between
these two Catholics was often raised, particularly by Caryll. But Pope denied
that he had any special tendresse for Patty. “I know myself too well at this
age to indulge any,” he replied, “and her too well, to expect as much folly
in my favour as she shows for her relations” (Corr, iii, p. 70).
Alongside Swift, though by no means so difficult to please, stood Dr John
Arbuthnot with whom Pope came to have a long and lasting friendship. It
was to Arbuthnot that Pope not only dedicated his famous verse Epistle but
addressed important principles of his writing, notably the roles that friends,
and enemies, came to play in the construction of his verse. “But sure,” he
wrote in 1734,

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it is as impossible to have a just abhorrence of Vice, without hating the Vicious,

as to bear a true love for Virtue, without loving the Good. To reform and not to
chastise, I am afraid is impossible . . . To attack Vices in the abstract, without
touching Persons, may be safe fighting indeed, but it is fighting with Shadows.
(Corr, iii, p. 419)

NOTES
1. Selected Letters, ed. Howard Erskine-Hill (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2000), p. 64.
2. Selected Letters, p. 141.
3. Sir Richard Phillips, Addisoniana 2 vols. (London: Richard Phillips, 1803), i,
p. 167.
4. Valerie Rumbold, Women’s Place in Pope’s World (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1989), p. 143.
5. Rumbold, Women’s Place, p. 145.
6. The Correspondence of Jonathan Swift, ed. Harold Williams, 5 vols. (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1963–65), vol. iv, p. 133.

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 3
JOHN SITTER

Pope’s versification and voice

Attending closely to how Alexander Pope’s versification – how he makes

verses – lets us hear the distinctive voices of his poems. Careful listening
pays rich rewards. Without it we may have a hard time getting beyond a
first impression, like that of Thomas Berger’s young protagonist in Little Big
Man, Jack Crabb. Having spent his childhood among the Cheyenne Indians,
Jack is adopted by a clergyman whose high-minded wife decides to civilize
him by reading Pope to or perhaps at him:

She read me some of that man’s verse, which sounded like the trotting of a
horse if you never paid attention to the words or didn’t understand most of
them like me. What I did savvy seemed right opinionated, like that fellow had
the last word on everything.1

This essay attempts to help readers new to Pope hear in his work something
more than mechanical monotony and dogmatic pronouncements.
The first step to appreciating Pope’s voice is to think of the word as plural:
Pope wrote in many voices. He shared with his age a sense of decorum,
which does not necessarily mean politeness but rather the idea that different
occasions call for different kinds of behavior. Literary decorum means that
various styles are appropriate for various kinds of poetry, just as dress differs
according to setting:

For diff’rent Styles with diff’rent Subjects sort,

As several Garbs with Country, Town, and Court.
(An Essay on Criticism, 324–5)

If Pope prized difference, why are we so likely to hear only uniformity? The
simple answer is that Pope’s variability is initially obscured by the promi-
nence of his heroic couplets. These rhymed, end-stopped units of iambic
pentameter (five-stressed lines) are immediately conspicuous for us because
poets haven’t much used couplets for the last 200 years. But the pentame-
ter couplet Pope favored was familiar to his readers as one of the central

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forms in English poetry since Chaucer; thus, variations and the construction
of an original voice within it were more noticeable than its mere presence.
Careful eighteenth-century readers would have been likelier to recognize a
difference, for example, between Richard Blackmore’s couplet,

Did not the Springs and Rivers drench the Land,

Our Globe would grow a Wilderness of Sand,

and Pope’s,

See, thro’ this air, this ocean, and this earth,

All matter quick, and bursting into birth,

than to note merely that both were “heroic.”2 They would have felt, for
example, the dogged regularity of Blackmore’s lines, each of which marches
straight to the rhyme word, as opposed to the interesting tensions within
Pope’s lines, complicated by caesuras (internal pauses) and parallel phrasing.
And they would have noticed the difference between Blackmore’s versified
truism (if the earth were not wet it would be very dry) and Pope’s paradoxical
insistence that what might seem empty is full and what might seem dead
(“matter”) is actually pregnant with life (“quick”).
The present-day American poet Hayden Carruth argues elegantly for
learning to hear in Pope’s poetry the naturalness his contemporaries heard.
According to Carruth, the heroic couplet, “which seems to us the height of
artifice, was just the opposite in the minds of those who used it.” Focusing
on John Dryden (1631–1700), Pope’s influential predecessor, Carruth makes
a strong case for historical imagination:

Dryden chose the couplet because he thought it the plainest mode available,
the verse “nearest prose,” and he chose it in conscious reaction against the
artificial stanzaic modes that had dominated English poetry during most of
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In short, he and his followers thought
they were liberating poetry, just as Coleridge and Wordsworth liberated it a
hundred years later, or Pound and Williams a hundred years after that. The
history of poetry is a continual fixing and freeing of conventions. It follows
that these poets, Dryden and Pope, really were engaged in a liberation; and it
follows too that we ought always to pay at least some attention to history and
fashion, the worldly determinants, in our consideration of any poetry.3

Reading historically is in fact unavoidable. No one picks up the work

of Pope or Tennyson or Milton mistaking it for contemporary poetry. The
task is to expand our sense of history as fully as possible, so that it allows
us to engage rather than merely distance the poetic past. Pope’s own view
of the rhymed verse with which we so fully associate him was disarmingly

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pragmatic. In his most direct comment on the matter he does not seem to see
his choice of the heroic couplet as ideological. He does not seem to see it as
the only medium that could adequately reflect his worldview, nor to regard it
as intrinsically superior. Later in his career he told Joseph Spence that “I have
nothing to say for rhyme, but that I doubt whether a poem can support itself
without it in our language, unless it be stiffened with such strange words as
are like to destroy our language itself” (Anecdotes, i, P. 173). Pope means
that the artifice and stylization of rhyme can, paradoxically, allow the poet to
be more “natural” – more colloquial – in diction and phrasing than would
blank verse, for the writer of unrhymed poetry will feel the greater need
to elevate the poem’s language to differentiate it from prose. This claim is
not exactly the same as saying that couplets are themselves “nearest prose,”
but it suggests that they may give the poet great freedom to incorporate the
language of prose.
Poetry is notoriously difficult to define, but we can describe it as essen-
tially a discourse of parallelism. The most immediate feature of poems is
that they are composed in lines, and one line of a poem is parallel to oth-
ers simply by being a line, usually of about the same length. This feature
beckons us to be especially alert to smaller and larger parallels. Smaller
parallels include similar words and syllables, tied to each other by devices
such alliteration, assonance, rhyme, and stress. Larger parallels depend on
meaning and include grammatical parallelism, simile, metaphor, and other
expressions of likeness or unlikeness (antithesis). This interplay of similar-
ities seems to be what the Victorian poet Gerard Manley Hopkins had in
mind when he asserted, in a remarkable undergraduate essay, that all poetic
“artifice” finally “reduces itself to the principle of parallelism.”4 The cou-
plet is arguably a very elemental form because the pairing of rhymed lines
announces so clearly where one line ends and another begins, thus making
the similarity of a line to its partner conspicuous and thus highlighting the
basic “principle of parallelism” that Hopkins finds fundamentally poetic.
Pope’s versification is a chapter – some would say the concluding
chapter – in a gradual “refinement” of the pentameter (five-foot) couplet
in English poetry. “Refinement” is a misleading term if we take it to mean
that Chaucer and Donne were less sophisticated artists than Dryden and
Pope, but we can get a good idea of what writers of Pope’s day had in mind
by “refinement” or “correctness” in formal matters by hearing what one poet
who followed Pope, Charles Churchill (1731–64), had to say about one who
preceded him, Edmund Waller (1606–87). Looking back from the 1760s,
Churchill declared Waller the “Parent of harmony in English verse” because
he “In couplets first taught straggling sense to close” (The Apology, 363,
365). Churchill means that mid- and late-seventeenth century poets began

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to bring grammar and versification together, treating the couplet as a syn-

tactic unit. Thus, what we think of now as “heroic couplets” tend to form
a complete sentence or independent clause, and usually each line will be
end-stopped. Often these self-contained units are vehicles for epigram:

Hope springs eternal in the human breast:

Man never Is, but always To be blest . . .
(Essay on Man, i. 95–6)

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,

As those move easiest who have learned to dance.
(Essay on Criticism, 362–3)

(Here the typography is normalized to dispel any “obsolete” flavour.)

A good way to grasp what Pope and his age valued as poetic “ease” is
to compare John Donne’s manner of writing satire in the 1590s with Pope’s
modernizations of Donne in the 1730s. Pope revived two of Donne’s satires
for political as well as artistic reasons (he could invoke the memory of the
respected Church of England clergyman as he made potentially dangerous
attacks on the government), but his versions of Donne’s satires afford a quick
comparison of versification and voice. Here is Donne describing various
kinds of bad writers, including those who write for the stage:

One, (like a wretch, which at Barre judg’d as dead,

Yet prompts him which stands next, and cannot reade,
And saves his life) gives ideot actors meanes
(Starving himselfe) to live by his labor’d sceanes.
As in some Organ, Puppits dance above
And bellows pant below, which them do move.

The lines are difficult, even for Donne. They are so partly because Elizabethan
writers believed that satire should be crabbed and rugged in language and
pacing, speaking as they imagined an angry “satyr” would. Donne’s paren-
thetical simile is somewhat obscure as well as sudden. It alludes to the old
provision (originally “benefit of clergy”) by which a defendant who could
read might escape the death penalty; Donne imagines the dramatist as a
doomed man prompting another to pass the literacy test. Then he just as
quickly imagines him as the invisible bellows of an ornate organ, imparting
motion to its visible puppets.
All of this would have been difficult enough in the late seventeenth century;
by the early eighteenth century it was growing hopelessly obscure. Pope
attempts to make it clearer for an audience further removed from Donne’s
allusions and assumptions:

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 Pope’s versification and voice

Here a lean Bard, whose wit could never give

Himself a dinner, makes an Actor live:
The Thief condemn’d, in law already dead,
So prompts, and saves a Rogue who cannot read.
Thus as the pipes of some carv’d Organ move,
The gilded Puppets dance and mount above,
Heav’d by the breath th’inspiring Bellows blow;
Th’inspiring Bellows lie and pant below.
(Second Satire of Dr. Donne, 13–20)

Pope initially avoids the abruptness of Donne’s courtroom simile by delaying

it until the reader at least has a chance to see what it refers to. Then he
expands Donne’s last two lines to paint a scene he knows the reader may
never have viewed and to enact the comically repetitive huffing and puffing
of “th’inspiring bellows.”
A further comparison illustrates how changes in form may also be changes
in voice and point of view. Donne’s complaint about the several sorts of bad
writers reaches a climax with his denunciation of the plagiarist:
But hee is worst, who (beggarly) doth chaw
Others wits fruits, and in his ravenous maw
Rankly digested, doth those things out-spue
As his owne things; and they are his owne, ‘tis true,
For if one eate my meate, though it be knowne
The meate was mine, th’excrement is his owne . . .
(25–30)

In Pope’s version, Donne’s breathless exasperation becomes cool detach-

ment, more in keeping with the sense Pope and his age had of Horatian
satire. Technically, the change depends on making all but the first of Donne’s
enjambed (run-on) lines end-stopped and syntactically self-sufficient (and
even that exception bears a slight pause):
Wretched indeed! but far more wretched yet
Is he who makes his meal on others wit:
’Tis chang’d no doubt from what it was before,
His rank digestion makes it wit no more:
Sense, past thro’ him, no longer is the same,
For food digested takes another name.
(29–34)

While these differences in versification enable Pope’s comic urbanity, they do

not fully explain the different effect. The scatological simile remains: plagia-
rism is like stealing another’s food and then defecating in public. By putting
the last couplet in more polite diction Pope plays at being more fastidious:

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unlike Donne, he will not use the word “excrement,” substituting for it the
euphemistic phrase “another name.” But this fastidiousness is of course only
apparent and fleeting. The audience must now supply the unspoken “name,”
and it is the rare reader who will not fill in the blank with a term cruder than
Donne’s.
Once regularity has become the norm, small departures from it may
become important. In the passage by Donne above, five of the six lines are
enjambed; occurring frequently, run-on lines contribute to a general impres-
sion of exasperation but do not call much attention to themselves individu-
ally. But in Pope’s poems, where enjambment is the exception, the absence of
a decisive line break can bear more weight. Here is a couplet from another
of Donne’s poems, Satire iv, as Pope modernized it. The lines describe a
character suspicious-looking enough to be considered a clerical spy during
an outbreak of anti-Catholicism:

One whom the mob, when next we find or make

A Popish plot, shall for a Jesuit take.
(Fourth Satire of Dr. Donne, 34–5)

Normal speech patterns follow syntax and keep verb and direct object
together (we find or make a plot), but the line break, especially given Pope’s
practice, suggests a pause. In the tension between sentence structure and lin-
eation we are in fact likely to hesitate, performing the lines something like
so:

One whom the mob, when next we find–or make–

A Popish plot . . .

Pope’s lines strongly suggest that the original “plot” of 1678 was a fabri-
cation, constructed rather than discovered, and that such fabrications will
recur when fear “next” spreads. As part of the feared minority, Pope needs
to propound all of this indirectly. It may not be too much to say that here
he uses small details of versification to convey a large-scale view of history.
Changes in the relation of poet to audience between Donne’s day and
Pope’s help explain their stylistic differences. Not printed until after his death,
Donne’s satires were written for manuscript circulation among a small and
homogeneous audience. Donne probably knew most of his first readers,
fellow Londoners and law students in their twenties. In contrast, by the
time Pope remodeled Donne, he was writing for publication, like most of
his contemporaries, and for an audience primarily of strangers. While the
audience for even the best-known poet of the early eighteenth century was not
as broad as that for prose, Pope’s readership was considerably less culturally
elite than Donne’s. “True ease in writing” of the sort Pope commended in

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An Essay on Criticism becomes more important, therefore. Its immediate

function is to put a mixed audience at ease by creating an impression of
conversational sociability and transparent meaning. Once those values have
been established, more subtle and demanding maneuvers may be carried
out.
But like any great poet, Pope requires interpretation of his readers, and
it is important not to let preconceptions of his “regularity” or “ease” get
in the way of thoughtful reading. Pope’s well-known assertion that “A little
Learning is a dang’rous Thing” (Essay on Criticism, 215) often applies to the
reading of his own poetry by those who come to it expecting predictability.
There is “creative reading,” Emerson said, “as well as creative writing,” and
Pope elicits it, beginning at the most basic level of performance. Take the
following four lines from The Rape of the Lock, for example, in which Pope
is describing the effects of make-up on Belinda. As she looks in the mirror,
cosmetic artistry

Repairs her Smiles, awakens ev’ry Grace,

And calls forth all the Wonders of her Face;
Sees by Degrees a purer Blush arise,
And keener Lightnings quicken in her Eyes.
(i, 141–4)

Asked to read these lines aloud, a student who knows that Pope wrote in
iambic pentameter and did so more regularly than, say Shakespeare or Mil-
ton, may produce a mechanical reading in which every second syllable is
dutifully accented (in bold type below) and the rhymes especially so, getting
a sort of “super-stress” (bold and underlined):

Repairs her Smiles, awakens ev’ry Grace,

And calls forth all the Wonders of her Face;
Sees by Degrees a purer Blush arise,
And keener Lightnings quicken in her Eyes.

Yet a more interpretive reading, in which voice and sense are allowed to
trump metrical rigidity, might produce something quite different. A good
way to begin such interpretation is to ask ourselves what one or two words
or syllables in a line might need special emphasis to get the most sense and
vitality from it. In other words, what might happen if we put the “super-
stresses” somewhere other than on the rhymes. Here is one possibility:

Repairs her Smiles, awakens ev’ry Grace,

And calls forth all the Wonders of her Face;
Sees by Degrees a purer Blush arise,
And keener Lightnings quicken in her Eyes.

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If we emphasize the carefully chosen verbs in the first line we hear Pope
saying that in Belinda’s case cosmetics do not cover up a lack of beauty
(a common idea in traditional satires portraying women) but instead elicit or
liberate what is already latent. This idea develops more fully with the phrase
calls forth in the second line. These verbs lead into the third line’s brilliant
paradox of a purer Blush. The phrase might first strike us as sarcastic (surely
a natural blush would be purer than a powdered one), but it also seems to
be true, as many critics have argued. A cosmetic blush might be “purer”
because more uniform and less mottled, say, than a sudden natural one. On
further reflection, it might also be “purer” because it is not the symptom of
sexual desire or self-consciousness. All of these possibilities bring the word
to the front of the stage. Emphasizing the keener lightnings in the last line
continues the idea that Belinda was stunning even before the process began.
The surprising verb quicken – which means to come to life perceptibly, as
when a fetus is first felt to stir – doubly echoes the “k” sound of keener
and reinforces a double sense of change. There is transformation, on the
one hand, and, on the other, the revelation of a beauty somehow present all
along.
Deciding how to perform a line, if only for our own ears, will require
decisions about meaning and psychological emphasis. As with other kinds
of interpretation, the possibilities are usually indefinite but not infinite; that
is, we cannot predict in advance just how many interpretations will emerge
as credible, but we will be able to recognize some as unsupportable. When
Eloisa, torn between spiritual and erotic longing, envies the simple innocence
of the nuns around her who have known nothing but the convent she imag-
ines an “Eternal sun-shine of the spotless mind!” Plausible readings might
put heaviest stress on blamelessness –
Eternal sun-shine of the spotless mind

– or on spiritual brightness despite the darkness of the cloister:

Eternal sun-shine of the spotless mind.

But one reading that clearly would not work is the metrically regular one:
Eternal sun-shine of the spotless mind.

Performed this way the line makes no sense and does indeed sound a lot
“like the trotting of a horse.”
If thoughtful performance lets us hear something better than a trot, what
responses are necessary to avoid Jack Crabb’s second complaint, feeling “like
that fellow had the last word on everything”? The closed couplet can lend

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itself, of course, to the feeling of finality, especially when crafted and polished
by Pope into epigram. Utterances such as

True Wit is Nature to advantage dressed,

What oft was thought but ne’er so well expressed.
(Essay on Criticism, 297–8)

or

All Nature is but Art, unknown to thee;

All chance, direction, which thou canst not see.
(Essay on Man, i, 289–90)

or

Years following years, steal something every day,

At last they steal us from ourselves away.
(Ep, ii.ii, 72)

seem too self-contained to invite dialogue or argument – or anything but

surrender. But, in fact, as one gets more experienced at reading Pope, such
lines begin to seem less like isolated “quotations” than parts of larger struc-
tures – verse paragraphs and poems – which do invite active engagement and
response. We turn to an example of the Popean paragraph in a moment.
A more immediate reason Pope’s lines often seem so “final” is that he
rarely rested until he felt they could not be improved. Pope revised more
than most authors, and he never (I think) revised without intensifying. The
most famous instance of Pope’s powers of revision is The Rape of the Lock,
a poem that Pope first published in 1712 in two cantos, without the sylphs
(the tiny spirits who attend Belinda), and then expanded, in 1714 and 1717,
to the poem we read today. In addition to this wholesale change, Pope also
revised the poem at the micro level, for purely stylistic reasons. Here are
Pope’s lines setting the time of day for the poem’s action as they appeared in
1712:

Sol thro’ white Curtains did his Beams display,

And op’d those Eyes which brighter shine than they;
Shock just had giv’n himself the rowzing Shake,
And Nymphs prepar’d their Chocolate to take;
Thrice the wrought Slipper knock’d against the Ground,
And striking Watches the tenth Hour resound.
(i, 13–18)

Here is how Pope revised them two years later:

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Sol thro’ white Curtains shot a tim’rous Ray,

And op’d those Eyes that must eclipse the Day;
Now Lapdogs give themselves the rowzing Shake,
And sleepless Lovers, just at Twelve, awake:
Thrice rung the Bell, the Slipper knock’d the Ground,
And the press’d Watch return’d a silver Sound.
(i. 13–18)

Pope always seeks concision, and the first thing one might notice is that he
gets rid of unnecessary words, of the sort he elsewhere called “expletives”
(Essay on Criticism, 346): “did . . . display,” “to take.” Pope’s later injunc-
tion to “show no mercy to an empty line” is, like Keats’s urging Shelley
to “load every rift with ore,” a call to poetic intensity.5 In this instance,
the playful Petrarchan formula that Belinda’s eyes are brighter than the sun
(a compliment reiterated in countless Renaissance love poems) intensifies
into the astronomical metaphor of “eclipse,” suggesting an event portentous
enough to make even the sun “tim’rous.” Lovers at noon replace Nymphs
ready at ten for their hot chocolate. The mystery of exactly how “sleepless
Lovers” can now “awake” is resolved by hearing the phrase as making fun
of an amatory cliché (lovers are not supposed to sleep or eat) in what will
soon be revealed as theater of clichéd operations. Finally, the watch that in
1712 had merely struck the hour returns, in 1714, a rich synesthetic “silver
sound” that prepares the way for the poem’s world of miniature splendor.
Robert Frost, who famously preferred regular forms to free verse,
remarked during one of his poetry readings that he nonetheless liked to
“take the rhyme as if it isn’t even there.” There is a stage in our reading of
Pope’s poetry when we do well to take the couplet as if it isn’t even there,
that is, to read for the verse paragraph. Some of the most vivid examples
of Pope’s artistry in constructing such paragraphs are the character sketches
that animate his great satires, and the best way to understand quickly the
importance of this larger unit of composition is to reread the portraits of Atti-
cus and Sporus in the Epistle to Arbuthnot, of the Man of Ross in the Epistle
to Bathurst, or of Flavia, Cloe, and Atossa in the Epistle to a Lady, asking
whether any of the couplets comprising these sketches could be rearranged
without loss.
Not only in the character sketches, which often have a narrative logic as
they follow a character’s “progress,” can we see and hear the importance
of sequence, accumulation, and climax, but in many of Pope’s more purely
expository passages as well. The opening sixteen lines of the first epistle of
An Essay on Man and the opening eighteen lines of the second (“Know then
thyself . . .”) are famous examples. But let us look now at a twenty-line

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paragraph from the third epistle (lines 7–26) which is, appropriately, about
interconnectedness. Like many other parts of An Essay on Man, these lines
enjoin the reader to look. For both personal performance and critical analysis
it helps to read the paragraph as rising in intensity through three stages. The
numbers on the left have been added for this purpose:

1. Look round our World; behold the chain of Love

Combining all below, and all above.
See, plastic Nature working to this end,
The single atoms each to other tend, 10
Attract, attracted to, the next in place
Form’d and impell’d its neighbour to embrace.
2. See Matter next, with various life endu’d,
Press to one centre still, the gen’ral Good.
See dying vegetables life sustain, 15
See life dissolving vegetate again:
All forms that perish other forms supply,
(By turns we catch the vital breath, and die)
Like bubbles on the sea of Matter born,
They rise, they break, and to that sea return. 20
3. Nothing is foreign: Parts relate to whole;
One all-extending. all-preserving Soul
Connects each being, greatest with the least;
Made Beast in aid of Man, and Man of Beast;
All serv’d, all serving! nothing stands alone;
The chain holds on, and where it ends, unknown.

It becomes apparent in the first “movement” that the directives to look and
see are really a directive to imagine. Since we cannot literally see atoms we
are to imagine them endlessly attracting and attracted to each other. It is this
act of imagination that enables Pope to turn the traditional metaphor of a
Chain of Being into the more dynamic “chain of Love.” Supposedly inert
matter seems nearly alive here in its restless motion. Strong emphasis falls
in this section to the verbs, especially the present participles “combining”
and “working,” and most of all to the adjective “plastic” (creative, shaping),
which stresses Nature’s formative energy.
Matter nearly alive is not the same as life, however, and the second section
turns to living matter. Here, too, we are in the realm of imagination, despite
the vocabulary of empirical observation. The grand processes of life, death,
and renewal are not visible to ordinary observation, but Pope’s instruction to
see “dying vegetables life sustain” and “life dissolving vegetate again” sug-
gests a sort of eighteenth-century time-lapse photography. The verbs again
demand emphasis and do a large share of the work. Pope attempts to bring

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to mind what we would now call ecological process, something we still have
trouble “picturing” broadly enough, even with our satellite cameras and
other sophisticated instruments of observation. The striking phrase “sea of
Matter” is too vast in scope to be a concrete image, but it is an invitation to
the largest wide-angle perspective we might manage, spatially and tempo-
rally. As various life-forms are imagined as so many bubbles emerging from
and returning to the sea of matter the phrase “life dissolving” from two lines
earlier suddenly acquires its full force.
The third part of this paragraph opens with the declaration that “Noth-
ing is foreign,” a mere assertion unless one sees and hears it as a summa-
tion of the cosmic survey immediately before. The half-line is best preceded
and followed by a deep breath: it represents a realization and a thought-
ful movement to an even greater level of generalization. The statement that
nothing is foreign is static in itself (X is Y); but it quickly modulates into
a series of active verbs. God (earlier identified as the “Soul” of nature) is
“all-extending,” “all-preserving,” and He “connects” all creatures; animals
and humans are in turn “all-serv’d” and “all-serving,” much as the atoms
at the start of this paragraph “attract” and are “attracted to” each other. If
these words are given their due emphasis and the couplets allowed to gather
energy, then the paragraph itself becomes a model of how “Parts relate to
whole.” If we open our ears to the accumulated music of the passage, Pope’s
conclusion that “Nothing stands alone” and that the Chain of Love is beyond
final imagining (“where it ends, unknown”) rests less on sight than on some-
thing approaching mystical vision. Such a view of human experience is not
of course contained in couplets, but it may be conveyed through them.

NOTES
1. Thomas Berger, Little Big Man (New York: Fawcett, 1963), p. 133.
2. Richard Blackmore, The Creation: A Philosophical Poem in Seven Books (London:
1712), vol. i, pp. 480–1; Pope, An Essay on Man, i, 233–4.
3. “The Question of Poetic Form,” reprinted in Donald Hall, ed., Claims for Poetry
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1982), pp. 50–61 (p. 59).
4. “Poetic Diction,” A Hopkins Reader, ed. John Pick (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1953), p. 80.
5. Ep. ii.ii, 175; Keats, letter to P. B. Shelley, 16 August 1820, in Selected Letters
of John Keats, ed. G. F. Scott (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002),
p. 464.

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 4
C Y N T H I A WA L L

Poetic spaces

Shut, shut the door, good John! fatigu’d I said,

Tye up the knocker, say I’m sick, I’m dead . . .
(Epistle to Arbuthnot 1–2)
Like an epic, Pope’s autobiographical poem Epistle to Arbuthnot (1735)
plunges in medias res, “into the midst of things”– or we might say, into the
midst of spaces. Pope, the successful poet, is besieged by aspiring authors,
with “Papers in each hand,” who “rave, recite and madden round the
land. | What Walls can guard me, or what Shades can hide? | They pierce my
Thickets, thro’ my Grot they glide” (5–8). So the poem acts pre-emptively,
opening itself by closing the door, to create a sustained refuge of 419 lines
where the poet can figure out how he got here in the first place. This is one
of the most dramatic spatial gestures of Pope’s poetry; this chapter will open
the door on others less spectacularly visible.
Pope is one of the most visual of poets. He had learned painting from his
friend Charles Jervas, and in “Epistle to Mr. Jervas” he hopes his poems will
have the same colour, clarity, elasticity, and precision: “Oh lasting as those
colours may they shine, | Free as thy stroke, yet faultless as thy line!” (63–4).
But as Lawrence Lipking notes: “The vast majority of modern readers are
blind to eighteenth-century poetry. We do not see poems well; we do not make
the pictures in our minds that the poets direct and excite us to make.”1 Part
of understanding Pope’s poetry is understanding how to see things, because
in the eighteenth century description was used very differently. Many early
prosodic techniques went out of fashion with the Romantic poets and never
quite came back in, so we’ve lost the power to appreciate their subtleties. As
an Oxford professor, A. Clutton-Brock, said witheringly in 1911, eighteenth-
century poets, employing “wrong standards of judgement . . . fell into the
habit of using general rather than particular terms in their descriptions,”
but that tack led them into “vagueness and pomposity.”2 Revisiting Pope’s
various spatial strategies will help recover ways in which the visualness of
poetry opened up more richly and specifically for Pope’s contemporaries.

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Pope’s sense of the visual emerges in the settings of poems, of course,

but also in their poetic structures and the way they occupy the page. The
Rape of the Lock saturates the clear-edged world of everyday spaces and
objects with invisible forms and incarnated thoughts; within the strict form
of the heroic couplet the verbs are wriggling and the images escaping. In
his translation of The Iliad, Pope explains the differences between descrip-
tive practices in different ages, and fills in the classical catalogue with
topographical epithets that would satisfy an eighteenth-century reader. He
also supplies an index that maps punctuation onto the territory of poetic
effect. Eloisa to Abelard employs the couplet structure and off-rhymes to
generate an unremitting pattern of confinement and rebellion that resists
final reconciliation. And The Dunciad Variorum, besides rewriting famil-
iar epic spaces, also poises the carved poetic world above an overflow-
ing prose sewer of notes, playing with as well as within the spaces of the
page.

The life and times of poetic diction

Thomas Quayle’s Poetic Diction: A Study of Eighteenth-Century Verse
(1924) sorts out the various categories that most irritated critics in the
long wake of the Preface to Lyrical Ballads (1802), in which Wordsworth
deplores “the gaudiness and inane phraseology of many modern writers”
and wants to substitute “the very language of men.”3 “Poetic diction” had
become “stock,” including words with stereotyped character used over and
over, or with a cumulative irrelevance of meaning, such as “shining sword,”
“mossy banks,” “lucid orb.” New adjectives were invented by adding the
suffix “y” to nouns (“beamy,” “bloomy,” “moony,” “roofy,” “sluicy”).
Epithets collected present participles, as in “rising ground” or “pleasing
grove.” Periphrasis – a roundabout way of expressing something without
naming it – produced “bearded product” for corn, “loquacious race” for
frogs, “scaly flocks” for fish, and “leafy nation” for trees. Compound epi-
thets abounded: comet-eyes, tongue-valiant, sin-polluted, slimy-born, sick-
feather’d. And abstract ideas and material objects were personified into
speaking figures: ecstatic Wonder, wan Despair, Valour armed. Wordsworth
often pointedly excepted Pope from his criticisms, but his criticisms ended up
swallowing the whole of the eighteenth century, including Pope. By the end
of the nineteenth century Matthew Arnold would damn with faint praise:
“We are to regard Dryden as the puissant and glorious founder, Pope as the
splendid high priest, of our age of prose and reason, of our excellent and
indispensable eighteenth century” – the classics of prose rather than poetry.4

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Their poems just didn’t seem be Wordsworth’s “spontaneous overflow of

powerful feelings” (Preface to Lyrical Ballads, p. 393).
And of course they weren’t spontaneous overflowings, strictly speaking.
Pope crafted and recrafted his poetry: “After writing a poem one should
correct it all over with one single view at a time. Thus for language, if an
elegy: ‘these lines are very good, but are not they of too heroical a strain?’,
and so vice versa” (Anecdotes, i, p. 171). And so vice versa: once is not
enough. As Samuel Johnson recorded, “[Pope] examined lines and words
with minute and punctilious observation, and retouched every part with
indefatigable diligence.”5 That is not to say Pope was not passionate about
poetry (or for that matter that Wordsworth didn’t equally craft and recraft).
“Why did I write?” he asks in Epistle to Arbuthnot; “As yet a Child, nor yet
a Fool to Fame, | I lisp’d in Numbers, for the Numbers came” (125, 127–8).
And as for spontaneous overflow: “The things that I have written fastest have
always pleased most” (Anecdotes, i, p. 45). But he cared so much about his
poems that “he kept his pieces very long in his hands, while he considered
and reconsidered them” (Johnson, LOP, iii, p. 221). Pope believed the best
poems represented “Nature Methodiz’d” (Essay on Criticism, 89), restrained
by rules but simultaneously ordaining them. Carefully seeing the spaces of
Pope’s poems – the ones they describe and the ones they embody – shows
that every punctuation mark, every verb, every rhyme, every couplet, every
paragraph, has its own carefully chosen place.
That cast of doomed dictional characters outlined by Quayle had a very
different life and presence in the early eighteenth century, and Pope mastered
the power of every one. “Stock” diction necessarily had a pre-cliché origin
somewhere, either in Homer or Virgil (which thus sanctified it for repetition)
or invented by Milton, Dryden, or Pope (and repeated endlessly by everyone
else). Pope had acerbic things to say about the “sure Returns of still expected
Rhymes”:

Where-e’er you find the cooling Western Breeze,

In the next Line, it whispers thro’ the Trees;
If Chrystal Streams with pleasing Murmurs creep,
The Reader’s threaten’d (not in vain) with Sleep.
(Essay on Criticism, 349–53)

Creating adjectives out of nouns and using present participles in epithets

can create kinetic energy in a poem, tightening the line between image and
motion: we see the ground in the very act of rising. Periphrasis can expand
boundaries and suggest connections, creating larger worlds for smaller
things. And personification renders the abstract present, palpable, a living

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thing inhabiting the visual world. Pope invests his poetic spaces with fluid
motion and encapsulated detail that for an early eighteenth-century reader
would open up layers of contrast, contradiction, possibility.

The internal and the invisible: The Rape of the Lock (1714)
The Rape of the Lock reproduces the social spaces of early-eighteenth century
England with crisp contemporary detail. Belinda’s bed, the theater, the River
Thames, and Hampton Court, as well as combs, card tables, coffee urns, and
scissors, are just some of the familiar spaces and the objects that occupy them.
Their physical presence and appearance is particularized, the boundaries and
edges are concrete. But suffusing this “real” world are others more beautiful,
more permeable, and more obscure: the interior spaces of thought, dream,
and wish, and the invisible world of the sylphs and gnomes. Throughout, the
themes that occupy those social and psychological spaces are reproduced in
the structures of the heroic couplets themselves.
The poem specializes in articulating or implying the relationship between
its vast quantities of objects and their location in space. Canto i begins in
Belinda’s bed: “Sol thro’ white Curtains shot a tim’rous Ray” (i, 13). (The
engraving in the 1714 edition shows that the white curtains are bed cur-
tains, not window curtains: see Figure 1). The personified male Sun pene-
trates into the most private of spaces, as the poet penetrates the most private
of dreams. The details of the bed-space are particularized: a downy pil-
low, a watch, a slipper, a bell. But Belinda and her lap dog, Shock, are not
the only occupiers of the bed. Ariel, Belinda’s guardian sylph, whispers in
her dreaming ear. His visual presence – “more glitt’ring than a Birth-night
Beau” – affects her slumbering sensuality, slipping innuendoes of body lan-
guage into the sotto voce confines of parentheses: “(That ev’n in Slumber
caus’d her Cheek to glow)” (i, 23–4). His speech repeats the pattern of
everydayness surrounded and transformed by the strange: the familiar areas
of theater box and the horse and carriage ring at Hyde Park are invisibly
overlaid with another world of “unnumber’d Spirits . . . ever on the Wing”
(i, 42, 43).
Belinda’s mind is a strange transformative place of its own. Figured as
Everywoman in Ariel’s description, inside the “moving Toyshop of her
Heart” we see “Wigs with Wigs, with Sword-knots Sword-knots strive, |
Beaus banish Beaus, and Coaches Coaches drive” (i, 101–2). People become
things that fight their mirror image for turf within a single line. The acts
of attempted displacement are roomily accommodated by the structures of
poetic placement.

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 Poetic spaces

Figure 1. “Sol thro’ white Curtains shot a tim’rous Ray.” Frontispiece to Canto I, The Rape
of the Lock (1714), courtesy of Special Collections, University of Virginia Library.

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Things become people in the dark psychological spaces of Canto iv, where
Belinda retreats to the Cave of Spleen to nurse her anger at the Baron cutting
off her lock:

Unnumber’d Throngs on ev’ry side are seen

Of Bodies chang’d to various Forms by Spleen.
Here living Teapots stand, one Arm held out,
One bent; the Handle this, and that the Spout:
A Pipkin there like Homer’s Tripod walks;
Here sighs a Jar, and there a Goose-pye talks;
Men prove with Child, as pow’rful Fancy works,
And Maids turn’d Bottels, call aloud for Corks.
(iv, 47–54)

The Cave is a place of “constant Vapours,” “Strange Phantoms” in mists,

the dimly seen shapes of “Spectres” and the ghastly emptiness of “gaping
Tombs” (iv, 39–44). Dark emotions and forbidden desires find themselves
simultaneously incarnated and insubstantialized. The Cave visualizes one
of the dominant tensions in the poem: between the visible and the hidden,
the fragment and the whole, what is contained and what escapes. Clean-cut
vials contain “fainting Fears, | Soft Sorrows, melting Griefs, and flowing
Tears” (iv, 85–6). “Paper-Durance” and “tort’ring Irons” and “Fillets,” like
couplets with words, bind, wreathe, and strain the hair (iv, 99–101), yet the
lock in the end is “shot thro’ liquid Air” (v, 127).
Poetic structures fix space; poetic contents continually escape, waft, drift
off, evaporate, melt. Beyond the world of cosmetics, cards, and coffee,
beyond familiar outlines and familiar patterns, lies something more delicately
colored and softly edged. The description of the sylphs flutters, both visually
and grammatically, dissolving the usual boundaries of time and space:

Some to the Sun their Insect-Wings unfold,

Waft on the Breeze, or sink in Clouds of Gold.
Transparent Forms, too fine for mortal Sight,
Their fluid Bodies half dissolv’d in Light.
Loose to the Wind their airy Garments flew,
Thin glitt’ring Textures of the filmy Dew;
Dipt in the richest Tincture of the Skies,
Where Light disports in ever-mingling Dies,
While ev’ry Beam new transient Colours flings,
Colours that change whene’er they wave their Wings.
(ii, 59–68)

The description, the actions, the verbs themselves create images that seem to
slide beyond the exigencies of the couplet structure itself. The heroic couplet

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is by definition a strict form, the pair of rhymed pentameter lines governing

all of Pope’s poetry. To most post-Romantic poets and readers, the form
has seemed too strict, too confining, too rigid. Yet in Pope’s hands what
moves within is full of light, color, motion, traveling beyond each line’s
end. As Ian Gordon says, “Pope establishes . . . transience . . . through the
momentariness encapsulated in the use of present participles. Things are
constantly ‘trembling,’ ‘floating,’ ‘waving,’ ‘fluttering,’ ‘shining,’ ‘sparkling,’
‘mingling,’ ‘melting,’ and, above all, ‘glittering’.”6 The present participles
capture a temporal transience, yes, but they also (along with other vivid
verbs) turn structural boundaries porous, continuing action visibly through
space. The sylphs, “Transparent Forms” (there and not-there), waft and sink,
dissolve and change – the visual and conceptual counterpoint to the combs
and jewels, watches and slippers, vials and bodkins, of the fixed lines of
furniture and rooms.

Topography and typography: The Iliad (1715–1720)

“Every historical period,” as Maynard Mack notes, “reformulates the great
poetry of the past partly by its own conceptions of that greatness and that
past as well as by its own views of what constitutes poetry and the art of
translation” (Life, p. 348). Pope was well aware of this. In his translation
of Homer’s Iliad, he remarks on the fact that Virgil’s catalogue of the ships
is shorter than Homer’s, and accounts for the difference historically and
culturally:

Homer might have a design to settle the geography of his country, there being
no description of Greece before his days; which was not the case with Virgil.
Homer’s concern was to compliment Greece at a time when it was divided
into many distinct states, each of which might expect a place in his catalogue:
But when all Italy was swallow’d up in the sole dominion of Rome, Virgil had
only Rome to celebrate. Homer had a numerous army, and was to describe
an important war with great and various events; whereas Virgil’s sphere was
much more confined.7

Every age seems to feel a poetic obligation to “[invest] static spatial

objects with vitality by transfusing into them its own rhythmic, temporal
succession.”8 Just as Homer and Virgil tailored their catalogues to their
contemporary audiences, so Pope created his own poetic lists of ships along
eighteenth-century lines.
Pope “opened the prospect a little” on the classical tradition of ekphrasis
“by the addition of a few epithets or short hints of description to some of
the places mention’d; tho’ seldom exceeding the compass of half a verse

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(the space to which my author himself generally confines these pictures in

miniature)” (“Observations,” p. 131). He creates what J. Daniel Kinney calls
a “scenic cohesion” that contrasts sharply with the inventory inclusiveness
of nature descriptions in pre-eighteenth century texts.9 “Grassy Pteleon,”
for example, is “decked with chearful greens” (ii, 849); Antron has “watry
dens and cavern’d ground” (ii, 852); Ithomè is “rough with rocks” (ii, 887);
Oloösson has “chalky cliffs” (ii, 899). This because “a meer heap of proper
names, tho’ but for a few lines together, could afford little entertainment to
an English reader, who probably could not be appriz’d either of the necessity
or beauty of this part of the poem” (“Observations,” p. 131). Pope wants to
fill in the spaces of the classical catalogue with vivid little capsules that will
rehydrate in the reader’s mind into a fully visualized field.
Pope appended a number of indexes to his Iliad, to the persons (and gods),
places, descriptions, speeches, similes, and ancient arts and sciences. The
index to “Versification” (which is glossed, “Expressing in the sound the
thing describ’d”) supplies a map of how the spacing of words, phrases, and
punctuation on the page will create an aural corollary – how textual space
can conjure up experiential space:

Made abrupt (and without conjunctions) in expressing haste, 7.282. 15.402.

Short, in earnest and vehement entreaties, 21.420–23.506.
Full of breaks, where disappointment is imag’d. 18.101, 144 – 22.378.
– where rage and fury is express’d, 18.137.
– where grief is scarce able to go on, 18.101. 22.616, 650.
Broken and disorder’d in describing a stormy sea, 13.1005
(“Poetical Index,” p. 1179)

The “broken and disorder’d” line that calls up the stormy sea comes at
the end of a swelling triplet on waves: “Wide-rolling, foaming high, and
tumbling to the shore” (xiii, 1005). In Book xxii, when Andromache learns
of Hector’s death, she cries, “Would that I had never been! – O thou, the
ghost | Of my dead husband! miserably lost! | Thou to the dismal realms
for ever gone! | And I abandon’d, desolate, alone!” (xxii, 616–19). Not only
are her lines broken by dashes, they are speared with exclamation points
that turn words into wails. Pope’s very punctuation is an exercise in spatial
determination.

Eloisa to Abelard (1717) and the spaces between rhymes

Eloisa to Abelard is itself a long lament based on the tragedy of the twelfth-
century French lovers, Peter Abelard and his student Héloı̈se. Abelard was

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castrated at the order of Héloı̈se’s angry uncle, and he became a monk;

Héloı̈se became a nun; their correspondence became famous. Pope’s ver-
sion of the story is from Eloisa’s point of view, a sustained internal struggle
between her duty to put God first and her passion for Abelard – between
“grace and nature, virtue and passion,” as Pope’s headnote to the poem
frames the equation. The poem is famous for its visual representation of
enclosed, dark, gothic space. Its poetic structures enact Eloisa’s struggle: the
couplets spin the same tensions round and round; the rhymes only seem to
offer aural and visual balance, containment, resolution.
Pope figures this internal struggle in dim, chill, close spaces: “deep solitudes
and awful cells,” “grots and caverns,” “dusky caves,” and “intermingled
graves” (1, 20, 163, 164). The inside of the convent is defined by “these
lone walls (their day’s eternal bound),” “moss-grown domes,” and “spiry
turrets.” Its “awful arches make a noon-day night, | And the dim windows
shed a solemn light” (141–4). The physical structure is a dark confinement;
the sense of oppression extends beyond its walls:

But o’er the twilight groves, and dusky caves,

Long-sounding isles, and intermingled graves,
Black Melancholy sits, and round her throws
A death-like silence, and a dread repose:
Her gloomy presence saddens all the scene,
Shades ev’ry flow’r, and darkens ev’ry green,
Deepens the murmur of the falling floods,
And breathes a browner horror on the woods.
(163–70)

Pope personifies melancholy into something almost haunting the landscape.

Her one moment of action is to stifle sound and motion; colour drains away.
Inside is mirrored by outside; there is no escape: “for ever, ever must I stay”
(171).
Back and forth Eloisa goes. Each poetical paragraph is a tormented
account of what she should be doing but cannot. If one line of a couplet
follows duty, the next counters with desire: “Now turn’d to heav’n, I weep
my past offence, | Now think of thee, and curse my innocence” (187–8). And
even single lines – and acts – devoted to God are penetrated by Abelard: “I
waste the Matin lamp in sighs for thee, | Thy image steals between my God
and me, | Thy voice I seem in ev’ry hymn to hear, | With ev’ry bead I drop
too soft a tear” (267–70). The measured regularity of the couplet structure
does not order the anguish, but endlessly recycles it.

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At first glance, the rhyme patterns seem simply to continue this eternal
cycle of containment. The aural expectation set up by one rhyme is con-
firmed with the clang of the second, Eloisa’s anguish bounding against walls
of inevitable sound: stores/floors, bound/crown’d, wears/tears, caves/graves,
burn/urn, keep/weep, go/woe, ordain/pain, destroy/joy. But the pattern
is even more bitterly twisted. The three key conceptual words refuse a
“perfect” rhyme: love, God, and join.
“Love” is used as an end-rhyme nine times in the poem. (In Elegy to the
Memory of an Unfortunate Lady [1717], also a poem about “[loving] too
well,” the word never ends a line.) But none of its pairs is a “true” rhyme:
move/love, remove/Love, prove/love, move/love, remove/love, remove/love,
disapproves/loves, prove/love, mov’d/lov’d (67–8, 79–80, 87–8, 153–4, 193–
4, 231–2, 259–60, 335–6, 351–2). We know that English pronunciation of
some vowels has shifted over centuries (“tea” and “obey” are famous exam-
ples of formerly perfect rhymes). But Edward Bysshe, in his Preface to The
Art of English Poetry (1702), explains that “Words [ending] in OVE have
three different Sounds; as Love, Prove, Rove; and though they are all plac’d
[in his “Dictionary of Rhymes”] under their own Termination, yet they do
not in strictness rhyme to one another. Therefore to distinguish them from
each other, a little space is left between the different Rhymes” (v). Dove,
Glove, Shove, and Love rhyme, but there is “a little space” between “love”
and the -ove words that are “near” or “off” rhymes: Move, Prove, Approve,
Remove (Art of English Poetry, p. 31). Eloisa’s “love” cannot seem to find
its perfect mate, its snug home in the end of the couplet; it must ever move
and remove – though never to anywhere.
“God” offers no home either. “God” and “abode” appear only twice,
and only with each other (127–8, 287–8). Bysshe has them very decidedly
in different places: “OD” and “ODE.” The twin terms of Eloisa’s anguish –
love and God – cannot be reconciled. The verb of reconciliation proves that:
“join” appears with “thine” (41–2) and then in one more try, with “mine”
(359–60). But it is not to be. Bysshe doesn’t have a category for OIN, but
“joint” appears under OINT and “thine” and “mine” under INE. Eloisa is
severed from Abelard, severed from God; the things that matter cannot be
joined together.
The one hope for peace that Eloisa can imagine, the one way for her pain
and the poem to close, lies in death, where “one kind grave” might “unite
each hapless name” (343), and “some future Bard” will join his griefs with
“mine.” That future bard seems to grant this last wish in a footnote that
places Eloisa where she wants to be: “Abelard and Eloisa were interr’d in
the same grave.” But not quite: “or in monuments adjoining.” This is not a
poem about closure.

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Sewer space: The Dunciad Variorum (1729)

One of the ways in which poetry is distinct from prose is the way it occupies
a page.10 Poetry takes up a lot of room, with large empty spaces surrounding
self-limited lines. It’s expensive in terms of production. Poetry is luxurious;
poetry is lofty. Steven Shankman explains his editorial choice of formatting
Pope’s notes to the Iliad as endnotes rather than footnotes: “To place Pope’s
notes at the bottom of the page, as was done in the later editions published
by the Lintots as well as in the deeply learned and indispensable Twickenham
Edition, is to diminish the Longinian sense of spacious and uncluttered ele-
vation that Pope saw in Homer and tried to simulate in English. It distracts
the attention from the whole to parts, which Pope decries throughout his
poetry” (Iliad, xvii). Maynard Mack describes John Ogilby’s Iliad (which
Pope read as a boy and loved): “His elegant column of verse (eight to twenty
lines on a page) is surrounded like a tiny peninsula by a vast weedy sea
of commentary rising against it from three sides” (Life, p. 45). But in The
Dunciad Variorum that is exactly what Pope now wants to do: to clutter
up textual space with a “vast weedy sea of commentary,” to create visual
chaos, to poise clean, sculpted lines of poetry above a seething sewer of septic
voices.
The notes overwhelm the space of the page. In the first printing of the
Variorum only two poetic lines manage to float above the underworld of
commentary (Figure 2):

Books and the Man I sing, the first who brings

The Smithfield Muses to the Ear of Kings.

Indeed. For then the “Smithfield Muses” – all the critics who had been attack-
ing Pope and otherwise lowering literary standards – launch in vociferously
from below. Lewis Theobald (“Tibbald,” the King of the Dunces here, so
honoured because of his line-by-line criticisms of Pope’s 1726 edition of
Shakespeare) makes the first appearance, taking issue with the title itself:
“Ought it not rather to be spelled Dunceiad, as the Etymology evidently
demands? Dunce with an e, therefore Dunceiad with an e” – just as in his
corrective “Shakespeare” to the then-traditional “Shakspear.” Theobald is
“personified” here (or perhaps we should say “objectified”) into The Pedant.
Line 104 of Book i introduces one of Pope’s most hostile critics, John Dennis:
“And all the Mighty Mad in Dennis rage.” Then comes a note that swallows
several pages whole, recapitulating all of Dennis’s attacks on Pope’s works
and person, for the most part verbatim: “[Pope] is as stupid and as venomous
[sic] as a hunchbacked Toad” (from Reflections on the Essay on Criticism).
Dennis throughout the sewer-world of notes foams in impotent fury, along

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Figure 2. “Books and the Man I sing.” The Dunciad Variorum (1729), Book the First,
courtesy of Special Collections, University of Virginia Library.

with all the other critics. It’s a noisy, dirty, scabrous world down below the
poetry.
And within the poetry. Pope addresses the issue of sewers directly in his
note to Book ii, line 71: “Obscene with filth the Miscreant lies bewray’d”. In
this Book, which features the “epic games,” the scurrilous bookseller Curll is

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racing another bookseller (Bernard Lintot, who had published Pope’s Works
in 1717), but loses when he falls into “a lake, | Which Curl’s Corinna chanc’d
that morn to make, | (Such was her wont, at early dawn to drop | Her evening
cates before his neighbour’s shop)” (Dunciad, ii, 65–8). The note defends
the incident, which “may seem too low and base for the dignity of an Epic
Poem.” It is “but a copy of Homer and Virgil,” but this poet, says the under-
ground Critic, has “(in compliance to modern nicety) . . . remarkably enrich’d
and colour’d his language as well as rais’d the versification” here. The poet
was clearly troubled at having to stoop so low, “but that he hoped ’twas
excusable, since levell’d at such as understand no delicate satire: Thus the
politest men are sometimes obliged to swear, when they happen to have to do
with Porters and Oyster-wenches.” The teeming subspace of intertextuality
gives a proper home to those who cannot understand “delicate satire.” The
kennels of the page, where the dunces’ spite bacterializes into a nastiness that
seems to overrun the original poem, in fact poetically – and historically –
contains it. It wasn’t until the twentieth century that Theobald’s Shake-
spearean editing received its critical due as “modern” scholarly recovery.
Dennis and Curll have yet to resurface with clean faces.
Space restrictions in this volume do not leave room to talk about the
paragraphical structuring of the tour in Pope’s most explicit architectural
criticism in the Epistle to Burlington, nor to examine the careful, clever
perspectives of An Essay on Man, nor to walk with Pope through his gallery
of paintings in Epistle to a Lady, nor duly to consider the spatial ramifications
of his epigrams. But I hope this essay makes clear the extent to which Pope
attended to the contours of poetic space – in description, word choice, rhyme,
line, couplet, paragraph, and the page itself. I will close with Pope’s Epitaph.
On Himself (1741):

Under this Marble, or under this Sill,

Or under this Turf, or e’en what they will;
Whatever an Heir, or a Friend in his stead,
Or any good Creature shall lay o’er my Head;
Lies He who ne’er car’d, and still cares not a Pin,
What they said, or may say of the Mortal within.
But who living and dying, serene still and free,
Trusts in God, that as well as he was, he shall be.
(TE, vi, p. 386)

Unlike Eloisa, the poet of as well as under this marble or sill or turf has an
escape clause: the last couplet rhymes “be” with “free.” The “Muse” who
“mid’st the Stars inscribe[s] Belinda’s Name” (Rape of the Lock, v, 150), the
“future Bard” who “best can paint ’em” (Eloisa to Abelard, 359, 366), the

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poet who fixes all his squirming enemies in textual amber, is in charge of his
own worlds. Pope’s poetic spaces give poetry the last word.

NOTES

1. Lawrence Lipking, “Quick Poetic Eyes: Another Look at Literary Pictorialism,”

in Articulate Images: The Sister Arts from Hogarth to Tennyson, ed. Richard
Wendorf (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983), p. 5.
2. A. Clutton-Brock, “Description in Poetry,” in Essays and Studies by Members
of the English Association, ed. H. C. Beeching 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1911), ii, p. 96.
3. Thomas Quayle, Poetic Diction: A Study of Eighteenth-Century Verse (London:
Methuen, 1924); William Wordsworth, Preface to Lyrical Ballads (1802), in
William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lyrical Ballads and Related
Writings, ed. William Richey and Daniel Robinson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin
Company, 2002), p. 392.
4. Matthew Arnold, “The Study of Poetry” (1888), in Poetry and Criticism of
Matthew Arnold, ed. A. Dwight Culler (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1961),
pp. 321–2.
5. Johnson, LOP, iii, p. 221.
6. I. R. F. Gordon, A Preface to Pope, 2nd edn. (London: Longman, 1993), p. 165.
7. Alexander Pope, “Observations on the Second Book,” in The Iliad of Homer
Translated by Alexander Pope, ed. Steven Shankman (London: Penguin, 1996),
pp. 129–30.
8. Ruth Helen Webb and Philip Weller, “Descriptive Poetry,” in The New Princeton
Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, ed. Alex Preminger and T. V. F. Brogan
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), p. 284.
9. J. Daniel Kinney, collegial email, 13 January 2000.
10. J. Paul Hunter has discussed the sense of privileged space that poetry enjoys on
a page in a plenary talk of the South Central Society for Eighteenth-Century
Studies in New Orleans, February 1996, and will shortly publish the work.

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 5
STEVEN SHANKMAN

Pope’s Homer and his poetic career

We should not underestimate the effect on Pope’s original poetry of the poet’s
translating virtually all of Homer.1 Pope had been thinking about the prob-
lems involved in translating Homer since at least his early twenties. Writing
in 1708 to his friend Ralph Bridges, he mentions Homer’s seemingly para-
doxical combination of copious diction and noble simplicity. “The Episode
of Sarpedon,” translated from Iliad xii and xvi, was published the following
year. Four years later he proposed to translate the entire poem, which Lintot
began to publish in 1715, when the first volume of the projected complete
translation, containing Books i–iv, appeared. The final volume of the first
edition was published in 1720. The Odyssey translation began appearing in
1725 and was completed the following year. This represents some sixteen
years of a young poet’s life – from the ages of twenty-one through thirty-
seven – spent with Homer, as Pope repeatedly turned over the Greek lines
in his head, struggled with how to translate them into readable and ele-
gant English, and lived with the Homeric commentators and the Homeric
characters.

An Essay on Criticism
Is it any wonder, then, that Pope’s first truly extraordinary poem, An Essay
on Criticism (first published in 1711), is a paean to Homer? “First follow
Nature,” Pope urges in this poem, “and your Judgment frame | By her just
Standard, which is still the same” (68–9).2 If you want to find out what
Nature is, the poet advises, “Be Homer’s Works your Study and Delight,
| Read them by Day, and meditate by Night” (124–5), for “Nature and
Homer” are “the same” (135). Through his experience reading and translat-
ing Homer, Pope learned the salutary lesson that the best literary criticism
emerges empirically from the perusal of actual literary works; that literary
criticism in the West began specifically as an attempt to make explicit the
principles of literary theory that were contained implicitly in the Homeric

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poems. From Homer he learned, in short, that “Those Rules of old discover’d,
not devis’d, | Are Nature still, but Nature Methodiz’d” (88–9).3 In his Poetics
Aristotle himself, Pope writes, was “Led by the Light of the Maeonian Star”
(648), i.e. by Homer.

The Rape of the Lock

That other great early success of Pope, The Rape of the Lock, would probably
never have been written had Pope not been reading Homer by day and
meditating upon him by night. The copiousness of diction he remarked upon
to Ralph Bridges could here, in a mock-heroic context, be indulged in without
fear of losing perspicuity. Pope composed the poem during some of his most
active years with Homer, the first version (consisting of two cantos) appearing
in 1712 and the final five-canto version in 1717, published in the same year as
appeared the third volume of the ultimately six-volume complete translation.
As William Frost has pointed out, Pope echoes his own Iliad translation
in The Rape of the Lock.4 The poet invites us to read his poem through a
Homeric prism, especially in Canto v where in a note Pope asks his readers to
consult Sarpedon’s speech to Glaucus in The Iliad if they wish to understand
the full import of Clarissa’s speech that the poet added “to open more clearly
the Moral of the Poem.” The ethical import of The Rape of the Lock, then,
is tied by Pope explicitly to the heroic code enunciated by Sarpedon in The
Iliad. Both he and Glaucus, Sarpedon tells Glaucus, must show themselves
worthy of the high regard in which their societies hold them by gaining glory
in battle or by allowing others to gain glory by slaying them. Rape of the
Lock, v, 25–34 is a parody of Iliad, xii, 387–96 in Pope’s own translation.
Sarpedon urges Glaucus to enter battle in order to show himself worthy
of his high standing in society; Clarissa urges Belinda to refrain from battle
for the very same reason. Sarpedon is receptive to the advice offered him,
Clarissa is not. But Belinda compared to Sarpedon? At first this seems a
most incongruous comparison, and of course we should expect this very
kind of incongruity in a mock-heroic poem. And yet there is a sense in
which there is a parallel between the cadences of Homer’s attitude towards
the brilliant world of Mycenae and Pope’s toward Belinda’s milieu. Critics
have often remarked on how, despite his satiric intentions, Pope appears to
be entranced by Belinda’s glittering world. We have here none of the bitter
satiric reductiveness of a Jonathan Swift. We should recall, in this context,
the similarities between the two-fold purpose of Homer’s epic poem and of
Pope’s mock epic. Homer recreates the glorious Mycenean world (some 500
years after the fact) in order to establish, through memory, a link between it
and the remnants of it, now dispersed from the Greek mainland to the islands

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along the Anatolian coast. But The Iliad is no uncritical encomium. Homer
also needed to analyze what went wrong, to criticize the intemperance of
the Mycenean leaders. That dual achievement of glorifying through poetry
and yet at the same time analyzing the sources of psychic and social disorder
finds expression in The Rape of the Lock as well. It is this doubleness of
purpose that makes the poem shine in a particularly Iliadic way: it is both
admiring and critical.
Both poems, moreover, specifically explore the ways in which it is the pride
of those admired by society that is responsible for social disorder. What
begins the quarrel in The Iliad is the seizing by Agamemnon of Achilles’s
“prize”, , that is Briseı̈s. What is responsible for the quarrel in the Rape
of the Lock is the Baron’s seizing “th’inestimable Prize” (compare “The prize,
the beauteous prize” in Pope’s Iliad, i, 149 with “this Prize, th’ inestimable
Prize” of The Rape of the Lock, iv, 113). In both poems it is in part the
seizing of the prize that the poets criticize, but their main concern is to show
how the offended party responds to the original violation. Both Achilles and
Belinda, in their reactions, become as guilty as the offending party and in
the end do more to threaten the stability of the social order than did the
original offenders. Both poems show a fascination – but a critical one –
with the vanity of their protagonists.

Eloisa to Abelard and The Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady

Both Eloisa to Abelard and the Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady
were published in 1717, a year that falls in the midst of Pope’s publishing of
the six volumes of The Iliad between 1715 and 1720. The passionate nature
of “the unfortunate lady” and of Eloisa recalls Pope’s passionate Achilles.
George Chapman – Pope’s daunting Renaissance predecessor in the field
of Homeric translation – tried consistently to rationalize Achilles’ wrath
and to turn Achilles into an ideal Renaissance hero who, from the opening
moment of the poem, is largely in control of his emotions. Achilles is no
ideal hero in Book ix, however, when he commits a fatal mistake by not re-
entering the battle at once in order to save his fellow Greeks from destruction.
Odysseus, Phoenix, and Ajax arrive as an embassy to Achilles’s tent and try
to persuade him to return, but to no avail. Achilles is coming slowly around
to reason, but he is not yet there. He is still obsessed with his passionate
hatred of Agamemnon, even after Odysseus, on Agamemnon’s behalf, makes
a more than generous offer to compensate Achilles for the loss of his prize.
In Chapman’s version, Achilles explains to Ajax at length that, in order to
teach Agamemnon a lesson about the art of kingship, he has consciously

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chosen to “loose the reines” (617) of his anger.5 Pope’s Achilles is far less
restrained:

Well hast thou spoke; but at the tyrant’s name,

My rage rekindles, and my soul’s on flame.
(759–60)

In his Observations on this passage, Pope leaves the moralizing Renaissance

epic tradition far behind:

We have here the true picture of an angry man, and nothing can be better
imagin’d to heighten Achilles’s wrath; he owns that reason would induce him
to a reconciliation, but his anger is too great to listen to reason. He speaks with
respect to them, but upon mentioning Agamemnon, he flies into rage: Anger is
nothing more like madness, than that madmen will talk sensibly enough upon
any indifferent matter; but upon the mention of the subject that caused their
disorder, they fly out into their usual extravagance.

Or as Pope puts the matter unforgettably in commenting upon Achilles’

anger at Agamemnon in an earlier passage in this book:

His rage, awaken’d by that injury, is like a fire blown by a wind that sinks and
rises by fits, but keeps continually burning, and blazes but the more for those
intermissions.6

Pope, like many European artists and thinkers of the late seventeenth and
early eighteenth centuries, was deeply interested in what Descartes referred
to as “The Passions of the Soul.”7 His sympathetic and accurate depiction
of Achilles’ uncontrollable anger is one of the things that sets his translation
apart from Chapman’s.8 And it is this same interest in the passions that char-
acterizes Eloisa to Abelard and the Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate
Lady. The unfortunate lady is to her guardian as Achilles is to Agamemnon.
Like Achilles, she chooses to “greatly think” and “bravely die” (10). She
heroically chooses to follow her own desires – which, in her case, results in
suicide – rather than be subjected to the continued authoritarian rule of her
guardian. She has the ambition of a hero, the “glorious fault” (14) of an
Achilles.
Pope’s Eloisa is similarly free of Chapmanesque moralizing. Eloisa to
Abelard does not teach a moral lesson. Like Ovid’s Heroides, it uses the
form of a letter to dramatize the heroine’s feelings. Eloisa does not become an
example to be avoided of sexual love prevailing over divine love, of cupiditas
over caritas, as one might expect if this were a certain kind of work written
in the Middle Ages. Eloisa is rather presented sympathetically as someone
who is in an impossible situation. Pope explores her dilemma rather than

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moralizes about it. Pope will develop his view of the emotions into his theory
of the ruling passion, which he explicates in the second epistle of An Essay on
Man (published in 1734) and alludes to in both the first (first published also
in 1734) and third (first published in 1733) of the Moral Essays. Might not
Pope’s early and long exposure to what he described as Achilles’ “prevailing
Passion” of “Anger” (see his note on The Iliad, xx, p. 489ff.), an obsessive
anger that at last relents in Iliad xxiv only under the most extraordinary
circumstances of divine intervention, have encouraged him to develop his
theory of the prevailing or ruling passion?

The First Satire of the Second Book of Horace (To Mr. Fortescue)
The final volume of Pope’s unofficially collaborative version of The Odyssey
appeared in 1726. Seven years later Pope published the first of his Hora-
tian imitations, The First Satire of the Second Book of Horace, later sub-
titled To Mr. Fortescue. While Pope’s Homer has had its detractors, no
one has doubted the stylistic brilliance of Pope’s imitations of Horace. Even
Coleridge, just before castigating Pope’s Homer for its “pseudo-poetic dic-
tion,” reminds his readers in the Biographia Literaria that Pope’s “original
compositions, particularly . . . his satires and moral essays,” are distinguished
by an “almost faultless position in the choice of words.”9 As Pope observes
in the postscript to his Odyssey (TE, x, pp. 382–97; see especially 389), what
drove him to distraction when translating The Odyssey was the challenge
of rendering – with the dignity required by Augustan epic style – the more
domestic and everyday and hence less elevated portions of that work which,
as observed by Longinus (the author of a great critical treatise on ancient lit-
erature), lacks the consistently elevated intensity of The Iliad. What a relief,
in comparison with the rigorous demands of translating Homeric epic, it
must have been for Pope when he began to turn the witty, conversational
style of Horace’s poems into English. At the inception of his efforts as a
Homeric translator, he viewed his climb to the top of Mount Homer as a
nightmare. He appears to have enjoyed versifying Horace. It was a natural
fit.
For all its greatness as a translation, Pope in his Iliad sometimes appears
to be straining. Not so in the Horatian imitations. To Mr. Fortescue begins:

P. There are (I scarce can think it, but am told)

There are to whom my Satire seems too bold,
Scarce to wise Peter complaisant enough,
And something said of Chartres much too rough.
The Lines are weak, another’s pleas’d to say,

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Lord Fanny spins a thousand such a Day.

Tim’rous by Nature, of the Rich in awe,
I come to Council learned in the Law.
You’ll give me, like a Friend both sage and free,
Advice; and (as you use) without a Fee.
F. I’d write no more.
P. Not write? but then I think,
And for my Soul I cannot sleep a wink.
I nod in Company, I wake at Night,
Fools rush into my Head, and so I write.
F. You could not do a worse thing for your Life.
Why, if the Nights seem tedious – take a Wife;
Or rather truly, if your point be Rest,
Lettuce and Cowslip Wine; Probatum est.
But talk with Celsus, Celsus will advise
Hartshorn, or something that shall close your Eyes.
Or if you needs must write, write CÆsa r ’s Praise:
You’ll gain at least a Knighthood, or the Bays.
(1–22)

Here is the tone of witty conversation captured with a polish that is unpar-
alleled in English poetry. Note, for example, the ease of the enjambment
(“Celsus will advise | Hartshorn”). The plain style of Sir Thomas Wyatt’s
epistles – the earliest examples of the conversational Horatian plain style in
English verse – is clumsy in comparison, and Ben Jonson’s couplets, though
often possessing the transparency of the plain style at its best, at times lack
Horatian wit. Pope has it all.
This is Horace, but it is Horace with a particularly Juvenalian – or, perhaps
we should say, for reasons that will be made clear in a moment, Achillean
bite. In the original Latin, Horace appears to be genuinely puzzled that some
readers consider his satire too heated:

Sunt quibus in satura videar nimis acer et ultra

legem tendere opus.10
(1–2)

[There are those to whom I perhaps might seem excessively fierce and to push
my work beyond what is lawful.]

The feigned modesty of the subjunctive videar (“I perhaps might seem”)
Pope works up and develops into a more aggressive sarcasm by means of
his interpolated phrase “I scarce can think it, but am told” and by then
going on to mention by name – none of this is in Horace – the scoundrels

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(the usurer and cheat Peter Walter and the rapist Francis Charteris) whose
moral sensibilities will be shocked by his allegedly “too bold” truth-telling
satire. The line “Tim’rous by Nature, of the Rich in awe” must be taken as
thoroughly ironic, for this satirist does not fear the rich and the powerful
and will depict himself throughout the poem as a warrior for truth. Like
Achilles, he is hardly “Tim’rous by Nature”.
In the lines that follow Pope shows that as a writer he is perhaps even more
convincing – as we might be led to believe from reading the Peri Bathous
(published in 1728) – when he attempts to parody epic bombast than when
he tries to sustain serious epic elevation:

P. What? like Sir Richard, rumbling, rough and fierce,

With Ar m s , and Ge o r g e , and Bru n sw i c k crowd the Verse?
Rend with tremendous Sound your ears asunder,
With Gun, Drum, Trumpet, Blunderbuss & Thunder?
Or nobly wild, with Budgell’s Fire and Force,
Paint Angels trembling round his falling Horse?
(23–8)

Such is Pope’s brilliant rendition of the typically Horatian refusal to write in a

particular genre (usually epic) whereby, in the refusal, the poet demonstrates
that he can indeed write in the rejected genre, though he chooses not to. It may
well have been in part as the result of Pope’s long and often frustrating strug-
gles with trying to bring across Homer’s epic elevation into readable, lively
verse that the English poet turned with such relish to the more kindred stylis-
tic spirit of the Horace of the Sermones. This is a Horace, however, whose
voice is tense with Achillean anger. The lines quoted above, for example, are
marked by Achillean outrage rather than modest Horatian self-deprecation.
To Trebatius’s advice that the poet should compose an encomium to Caesar
rather than engage in the potentially libelous effort of writing satire, Horace
humbly responds, “I wish I could, good father, but I lack the strength”
(Cupidum, pater optime, vires/deficiunt). Pope omits the gentle and intimate
vocative pater optime and instead replies with the incensed “What? like Sir
Richard [the now long-forgotten epic poet Sir Richard Blackmore], rum-
bling, rough and fierce, | With Ar m s , and Ge o r g e , and Bru n sw i c k
crowd the Verse?”
I mentioned how Pope, more empathetically than previous translators
working in the moralistic tradition of Renaissance epic, responded to the
fire in Achilles’ character. Achilles was in many ways an anti-establishment
figure, a fiery and valiant hero who goes it alone and pits himself against the
power structure dominated by Agamemnon. As Howard Weinbrot reminds

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us, Horace was a friend of the ruling elite of Augustan Rome, and his
truth-telling role as satirist was therefore compromised, from Pope’s point
of view.11 Pope, in the days when he was composing his Horatian imitations,
was no friend of the ruling elite. He felt profoundly unappreciated by and
despised both Georges (“Still Dunce the second reigns like Dunce the first,”
the poet remarks in Book i, line 6 of the 1742 Dunciad) as well as Walpole,
men who, the poet was convinced, were hostile to true worth. Like Achilles
with regard to a similarly unappreciating political superior (Agamemnon),
Pope despised that rulership.
Pope in fact writes much of his greatest poetry from an anti-establishment
stance, from a position of self-righteous Achillean defiance of authority. Pope
saw himself, in his role as Horatian satirist, as an Achillean warrior, “armed
for Virtue when I point the Pen” (105), his aim to “Brand the bold Front
of shameless, guilty Men, | Dash the proud Gamester in his gilded Car [i.e.
chariot]” (106–7). At one point in the poem Pope in fact represents himself,
by clear implication, as Achilles, the greatest Greek warrior:

Satire’s my Weapon, but I’m too discreet

To run a Muck, and tilt at all I meet;
I only wear it in a Land of Hectors,
Thieves, Supercargoes, Sharpers, and Directors.
(69–72)

Pope wears his satiric weapon only in a land of Hectors, i.e. bullies. And if
his enemies are Hectors, then Pope is Achilles.
Achilles may indeed be viewed as the original progenitor of the truth-telling
satirist who is the speaker of the Horatian sermo. Horace’s anti-rhetorical
plain style is derived from the plain style of Plato’s Socrates. And one of
Socrates’ heroes was Achilles, specifically the Achilles who, in Iliad xviii,
chooses to avenge Patroclus’ death and re-enter the battle, even though he
knows that this action will result in his death. In the Apology (28), Socrates
points to Achilles’ choice as a paradigm for his own refusal, in response to
the coercion of the Athenian government, to abandon the philosophical life.
The portrait Pope paints of himself as Achillean warrior for truth thus makes
explicit the Achillean pedigree of the Horatian satirist. Pope’s truth-telling
did not fall on deaf ears. As Maynard Mack informs us in his monumen-
tal biography, after the publication of some particularly hard-hitting satiric
verses, Pope felt it was necessary for him to carry a pistol for self-defense
when he ventured forth into public (Life, pp. 487–8). The image of Pope as
physically endangered Achillean warrior for truth was evidently more than
a literary trope.

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The Dunciad
We must, in concluding this survey of the influence of Pope’s encounter with
Homer upon his original poetry, consider the case of The Dunciad. The poem
was published in its first version in 1728, just two years after the final vol-
umes of The Odyssey translation. In the postscript to his Odyssey, as I have
mentioned, Pope expresses his frustration over the seemingly irresolvable
difficulties he faced in trying to render the more lowly or domestic elements
in Homer’s epic with the requisite Augustan dignity. In The Dunciad Pope
was able to make full use of his eye for sharply rendered (and sometimes
uninhibitedly vulgar) particulars that would have been deemed too “low”
for an Augustan version of Homeric epic, and he can place these particulars
within a framework that allows him to make the kind of generalized major
statement about the reasons for the decline of a civilization that is worthy
of Homer’s Iliad. The Dunciad is clearly more indebted for its structure to
The Aeneid than to The Iliad, for it narrates the movement of civilization
– though in an ironic, inverted form – from east to west, as Rome, in Vir-
gil’s conception, was founded by the Trojans who survived the catastrophic
Trojan war and then made the journey westward to Italy. Despite its indebt-
edness to The Aeneid for its structure, The Dunciad possesses Iliadic fire
rather than Virgilian pathos. Pope’s grand mock-epic is characterized, more-
over, by the kind of rugged excellence and disdain for careful mediocrity that
Pope’s admired Longinus associates with the Homer of The Iliad.
In The Iliad, Homer recreates the glorious Mycenean world of the dis-
tant past in order to establish, through memory, a link between that heroic
world and the remnants of it, now dispersed from the Greek mainland to
the islands along what is now the coast of Turkey. But The Iliad is no uncrit-
ical encomium. Homer celebrated the then-distant heroic Mycenean age, it
is true, but, as I mentioned earlier, he as importantly took it as his task to
analyze what went disastrously wrong in that age. It is perhaps the case that
epic ceased to be a truly viable genre as soon as it abandoned its critical
slant in favour of the encomiastic/nationalist mode established by Virgil’s
Aeneid, when this poem is read as propaganda, as “a party piece,” as Pope
believed it to be.12 Like The Iliad (and unlike Pope’s reading of The Aeneid),
The Dunciad is a cultural critique and it remains vital, even if much of it –
because of the myriad allusions to contemporary figures and events – is
obscure. Moreover, for years constrained by the demands of Augustan deco-
rum when translating Homer, Pope, when composing The Dunciad, must
have felt enormously liberated by the chance to deploy epic devices with
imaginative abandon in the service of a cause in which he deeply believed.

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Had Pope not translated The Iliad and been rebuffed by the arrogant Bent-
ley – the famously bellicose Cambridge classical scholar who discovered the
Homeric digamma and who was also an editor of Paradise Lost – we would
never have had the great passage on Aristarchus, the “mighty Scholiast,
whose unweary’d pains | Made Horace dull, and humbled Milton’s strains”
(Dunciad, iv, 210–11) and the discoverer of the Homeric digamma in the
fourth book of The Dunciad (1743). It was not just the personal slight (“It is
a pretty poem, Mr. Pope,” Bentley said in the famous remark about Pope’s
Iliad, “but you must not call it Homer”)13 that angered Pope, although we
surely should not underestimate how central was the preoccupation with
settling scores to the wickedly clever poet of The Dunciad. But having spent
much of his life translating Homer and having become more and more con-
vinced that Homer had something to say about the human condition that
was eternally valuable, Pope came to have less and less tolerance for what he
took to be the historicizing pedantry of the Moderns as represented (in Pope’s
view) by Bentley, who dismissed Homer as a quaint historical curiosity who
pandered to his unsophisticated audience. In terms of the eighteenth-century
debate between the Ancients and Moderns, Bentley’s historicism placed him,
for Pope, in the camp of the Moderns. The Ancients, in contrast, believed
that Homer transcended his own era.
Anthony Collins, an eighteenth-century deist, articulates the position of
the Ancients in regard to Homer in his A Discourse of Free-Thinking Occa-
sioned by the Rise and Growth of a Sect call’d Free–Thinkers (1713). Collins’s
contention that Homer displayed a “Universal Knowledge of things” and
that the poem was designed “for Eternity, to please and instruct Mankind”14
was, by Bentley, refuted thus:

Take my word for it, poor Homer, in those circumstances and early times, had
never such aspiring thoughts. He wrote a sequel of Songs and Rhapsodies, to
be sung by himself for small earnings and good cheer, at Festivals and other
days of Merriment; the Iliad he made for the Men, the Odysseis for the other
sex.15

It was in part his experience of translating the poetry of Homer that con-
vinced Pope that Bentley had to be deeply wrong in a way that typified what
he felt was ailing a contemporary civilization in which men “See all in Self,
and but for self . . . [are] born” (Dunciad, iv, 480) and in which “The critic
Eye, that microscope of Wit, | Sees hairs and pores, examines bit by bit”
(iv, 233–4), but who fail to see “How parts relate to parts, or they to whole,
| The body’s harmony, the beaming soul” (iv, 235–6).
To Bentley’s reductively historicizing view of Homer, Pope opposes his
own belief in The Dunciad that the Homeric poems are of continuing

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relevance. And the English poet makes his point as he bids farewell to
Bentley/Aristarchus in The Dunciad. “Walker! Our hat”, Aristarchus impe-
riously orders Dr Richard Walker, the Vice-Master of Trinity College,
Cambridge, where Bentley was Master, and now a Dunce serving as hat-
bearer to Aristarchus in Pope’s poem. The last in the poem’s procession
of narrow, philologically inclined pedants promising their devotion to the
Goddess of Dulness, Aristarchus now superciliously departs and yields
the floor to the spoiled and corrupt young fops who have just returned
from the Grand Tour of classical sites in Italy. On that “Classic ground”
(iv, 321), classical learning, robbed of its great moral value by the narrow-
mindedness of pedants like Aristarchus, has been replaced by a vulgar, osten-
tatious, and shallow consumerist tourism. As Aristarchus departs, the poet
writes:

– Nor more he deign’d to say

But stern as Ajax’ spectre, strode away.
(iv, 273–4).

These lines contain allusions to two of Pope’s favorite ancient authors,

Homer and Longinus. Longinus (On the Sublime, ix, 3), makes the provoca-
tive observation that sublimity can at times be more effectively achieved by
silence than by words, such as we find, the great critic remarks, in the eleventh
book of The Odyssey.
As the identical rhyme words reveal, these lines from The Dunciad are
modeled on some lines in Pope’s translation (or perhaps we should say
William Broome’s; this was one of the books translated by Broome, though
The Odyssey translation was published under Pope’s name). They occur
in Odyssey xi, where Odysseus in the underworld remarks upon what
Pope in his notes refers to as the “sow’r, stubborn, untractable [sic]” char-
acter of Ajax, who is “upon all occasions given to taciturnity” (TE, xi,
p. 418):

While yet I speak, the shade disdains to stay,

In silence turns, and sullen stalks away.
(Odyssey, 691–2)

Odysseus, in Homer’s underworld, encounters Ajax. Ajax had competed

unsuccessfully for Achilles’ arms, which Thetis – who judged Odysseus to
have been the most valiant of the Greeks because of his having secured her son
Achilles’ body after he had been slain in battle – awarded to Odysseus. Ajax,
once he was judged inferior to Odysseus, took his own life. Still incensed that
Achilles’ armour had been given to Odysseus rather than to to himself, Ajax,
now a shade in Hades, remains indignant and refuses to speak to Odysseus

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in the famously moving scene in Odyssey xi, 543–67. The sour, stubborn,
intractable taciturnity of Homer’s Ajax, it turns out, is no mere historical
curiosity. The character of Ajax does indeed have continuing relevance in
understanding the modern world, specifically in retaining the paradigmatic
power to serve as a foil for Bentley’s less noble but equally “sow’r, stubborn,
untractable,” and taciturn presence. The Ancient Pope has thereby cunningly
defeated the Modern Bentley, for the spirit of Homer is alive and well and
still speaks powerfully to those who possess generous literary minds. Homer
is indeed dead, is a mere historical curiosity for those who – to their spir-
itual peril – condemn themselves to vices, such as a sour and unrelenting
taciturnity, by failing to see what Homer has so powerfully represented in
his moving, indeed sublime, poetry.16
The story behind Aristarchus’ sullenness in The Dunciad is that Bentley
was supposed to have rudely walked out during a dinner at Trinity Col-
lege when he was asked, by a foreign visitor who had been hospitably
invited to dine at the college, some scholarly questions that Bentley pre-
ferred not to answer. Offended by the foreign scholar’s persistence, Bentley
reportedly called out to his Vice-Master, “Walker, my hat!” and in a surly,
Ajax-like manner, left the room. As the editor of the Twickenham edition
informs us, “Bentley generally wore, while sitting in his study, a hat with an
enormous brim, as a shade to protect his eyes” (TE, v, p. 362). The grand
silence (. . . .  [On the Sublime, ix, 3] of the essentially noble –
albeit taciturn – Ajax is one thing, according to the poet of The Dunciad.
The condescending and inhospitable snub by the pedant Aristarchus is of
an entirely different order. As Longinus comments, “it is impossible that
those whose thoughts and habits all their lives long are petty ( ) and
servile should produce anything wonderful (), worthy of immor-
tal life.”17 Bentley had snubbed the scholar who was a foreign dinner-guest
at Trinity College, Cambridge. Aristarchus acts condescendingly towards
the “lac’d Governor from France,” a foreigner who has just returned from
taking his pupils on the Grand Tour of Europe, which includes classical
sites in Italy. Part of the irony here is that, for Pope, pedants like Bentley
have no reason to be condescending towards the morally vapid pupils that
these pedants’ own brand of narrow, specialized classical scholarship has
produced.
In The Iliad, which Pope formatively translated in his early career, Homer
sings of Achilles’ wrath. It is Pope’s wrath that animates his final poem, the
often ruggedly (if comically) sublime Dunciad in Four Books of 1743, a year
before the poet’s death. Pope’s poetic career, from beginning to end, was
shaped by his experience of Homeric verse.

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NOTES

1. On the subject of the influence of translating Homer on Pope’s original poetry,

see the perceptive and learned section, written by Maynard Mack, on “Pope’s
Homer: Its Relation to His Life and Work,” in TE, vii, pp. ccxxi–ccxlix.
2. Cited from TE, as will be all references to Pope’s poetry, apart from The Iliad
translation, which will be cited from The Iliad of Homer, Translated by Alexander
Pope, ed. Steven Shankman (London: Penguin, 1996).
3. See Steven Shankman, “Led by the Light of the Maeonian Star,” Classical Antiq-
uity ii.1 (1983), pp. 108–16; and In Search of the Classic: Reconsidering the
Greco-Roman Tradition, Homer to Valéry and Beyond (University Park: Penn-
sylvania State University Press, 1994), pp. 63–76.
4. “The Rape of the Lock and Pope’s Homer,” Modern Language Quarterly 8
(1947): pp. 342–54.
5. Chapman’s Homer: The Iliad, ed. Allardyce Nicoll (Princeton: Princeton Univer-
sity Press, 1956), p. 197.
6. Pope’s observations on Iliad, IX, 406ff.
7. Descartes’ influential Traité des passions de l’âme was published in 1649.
8. See Chapter 1 (“The Passionate Design: Books i and ix”) of Steven Shankman,
Pope’s Iliad: Homer in the Age of Passion (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1983).
9. Biographia Literaria, eds. James Engell and W. Jackson Bate, 2 vols. (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1983), vol. i., p. 39.
10. Satires, Epistles, and Ars Poetica, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA.: Har-
vard University Press, 1926), p. 126.
11. See Augustus Caesar in “Augustan” England: The Decline of a Classical Norm
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978); and Alexander Pope and Formal
Verse Satire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982).
12. Pope to Spence, July-August (?) 1739: “The Aeneid was evidently a party piece,
as much as Absalom and Achitophel. Virgil [was] as slavish a writer as any of the
gazetteers. I have formerly said that Virgil wrote one honest line” (Anecdotes, i,
pp. 229–30).
13. Johnson, LOP, iii, p. 213.
14. Anthony Collins, A Discourse of Free-Thinking Occasioned by the Rise and
Growth of a Sect call’d Free-Thinkers (London, 1713), p. 9.
15. Bentley, Remarks upon a late Discourse of Free-thinking (London, 1713), p. 18.
16. The sullen disdain of Ajax must be inferred from the general sense of the passage
rather than from an exact rendering of the Greek. Note that Pope’s translation
of the passage from The Odyssey flaunts the very disdain for literalness that
word-catching pedants like Bentley deplored. Odysseus, in the Greek, simply
says (xi, 563): “      ” (“Thus I spoke; he said nothing
to me in response”). The Odyssey of Homer, ed. W. B. Stanford, 2 vols. (London:
Macmillan, 1965), vol. ii, p. 185.
17. Longinus: On the Sublime, trans. W. H. Fyfe, rev. Donald Russell, in Aristotle:
Poetics, Longinus: On the Sublime, Demetrius: On Style, (Cambridge, MA: Har-
vard University Press [Loeb Classical Library], 1995), pp. 184–5.

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 6
H O WA R D D . W E I N B R O T

Pope and the classics

The question of Pope’s relationship to the Greek and Roman classics once
was thought clear: he was deeply indebted to them, generally reflected their
values, and often imitated them to show modern inadequacy. He was vari-
ously called “neoclassical” and “Augustan” in order to suggest that indebt-
edness. He exemplified and moved within a world of polished, polite poetry
and civilized discourse among other civilized neoclassical Augustans. To be
“Augustan” was a sign of approbation.
Much of this vision was seen through spectacles regularly prescribed from
about the later nineteenth to the later twentieth century. One distinguished
American scholar argues that the “true Augustans” saw in “Horace’s [65
bc–8 bc] poetry a concentrated image of a life and civilization to which they
more or less consciously aspired.” A subsequent distinguished British scholar
adds that Pope’s imitations recommend “the Augustan ideal in its civilized
splendour.”1 More recently, Pope has begun to be seen surely as indebted
to admired classical sources, but also skeptical regarding many of their val-
ues and selective in what he chose to respect.2 So far from being politely
“Augustan,” he often was intentionally rude, crude, vulgar, and angry. For
example, in what was called “This filthy Simile, this beastly Line” he char-
acterized court politicians as Westphalian hogs feeding off one another’s
excrement (TE, iv, p. 323; Epilogue to the Satires [1738], ii, 181). He also
portrayed corrupt exhibitionist London booksellers engaged in a public uri-
nating contest, in which a well-endowed syphilitic victor carries off a female
writer of pornography as his prize so that they can produce infectious books
(TE, v, pp. 303–4). In many cases, Pope and his contemporaries berated
Augustus Caesar (63 bc–ad 14) and denigrated his supportive poets. The
clichés no longer work as a reasonable version of eighteenth-century literary
history.
This does not mean that Pope’s relationship to the classics is any easier to
establish, or that it is simple and clear in the opposite direction from the once

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received version. Pope often disapproved of content while approving and

adapting style and devices. As late as 1735 he could say that in his Imitations
of Horace he thought that “An Answer from Horace was both more full, and
of more Dignity, than any I cou’d have made in my own person” (TE, iv,
p. 3). Nonetheless, there is an approximate shape to this complex history. It
begins with admiration, imitation, and translation of the ancients, especially
Homer, while recognizing their moral limits and need to be adapted to the
modern world. Along the way, Pope recognizes the competing strengths of
British literature and the political weakness of the great Roman Augustans
who celebrated a tyrant. Pope modulates his Horatian voice in favor of
the voice of the outsider, the Silver Age early second-century satirist Juvenal,
someone demonstrably more useful for the opposition, religiously victimized
Catholic, physically distorted British poet. He concludes his career with a
mingling of Virgilian (70 bc–19 bc) and Miltonic devices in his final poem,
The Dunciad in Four Books (1743), in which the Miltonic vastly outweighs
the Virgilian in moral seriousness. I begin near the beginning.

From affiliation to defection

“All that is left us is to recommend our productions by the imitation of the
Ancients: and it will be found true, that in every age, the highest character for
sense and learning has been obtain’d by those who have been most indebted
to them.” So Pope claims in the Preface to The Works of Mr. Alexander Pope
([1717]: TE, i, p. 7). Such a response was predictable for a young poet auda-
ciously collecting his works in a handsome folio appropriate for the major
authors with whom he hoped to be associated. That volume included clas-
sically based poems like the Pastorals (1709), An Essay on Criticism (1711),
Windsor-Forest (1713), and the final version of The Rape of the Lock that
added Clarissa’s normative pacific speech as an improved version of Sarpe-
don’s martial speech to Glaucus in Book xii of The Iliad. By implication,
like Pope’s worthy predecessors, he too deserved “the highest character for
sense and learning.” The Works also served to advertise and support Pope’s
ongoing publication of his great version of The Iliad (1715–20). The exten-
sive notes to that translation embody both sensitive practical criticism and
a handsome synthesis of response to Homer from Plato to Pope’s own con-
temporaries. Here indeed seemed a golden compendium of poetry, criticism,
and scholarship in a brilliantly budding career anchored in adaptation and
emulation of the classical ancients. That gold soon would tarnish.
In about 1738 Pope writes his own epitaph “For One who would not be
buried in Westminster Abbey.” He there rejects two major ancients as either
sources of benevolent imitation or as arguments on authority.

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H e ro e s and K i n g s ! your distance keep:

In peace let one poor Poet sleep,
Who never flatter’d Folks like you:
Let Horace blush, and Virgil too.
(TE, vi, p. 376)

What has happened in the twenty-odd years to evoke so stern a recon-

sideration? Why should Pope exchange the young man’s ostentatious affili-
ation for the older man’s ostentatious distancing? Why should he single out
Horace and Virgil among the Roman classics? The tentative answers to these
questions suggest varied reconsiderations within Pope’s varied contexts.
Moral reconsideration is perhaps the most obvious part of the Greek por-
tions of the question. Pope of course acknowledged and praised Homer’s
transcendent achievement. He “had the greatest Invention of any Writer
whatever.” Since invention is the foundation of poetry, Homer also “has
ever been acknowledg’d the greatest of Poets,” Pope says in the Preface to
The Iliad ([1715]: TE, vii, p. 3). He also acknowledged that whatever the
presumed noble simplicity of Homer’s age and its fertilizing myths, it was
morally inferior to the Christian world and Christian virtues. Pope’s generally
approving notes to The Iliad nonetheless observe that in spite of some excess,
commentators from Plato to Houdar de la Motte rightly objected to Homer’s
theology and culture. Pope disapproves of Homer’s crude language, pagan
gods, and their delight in slaughter and sensuality so well exemplified in the
Greek warriors. Sometimes Pope softens the “mean and vulgar Words” in his
original (TE, viii, p. 64n, quoting Boileau on Longinus). He regards Thetis’
advice that Achilles relieve his grief for the death of his friend Patroclus by
taking Briseis to bed as an outrage to “Decency” and in “Expression . . .
almost obscene” (TE, viii, p. 543n). At other points he needs to apologize
for, rationalize, or historicize Greek brutality, as when Achilles wishes all
his Greek allies dead so that he and Patroclus alone could slay all the Tro-
jans (TE, viii, p. 241n). Pope often indeed finds Greek morality immoral.
Agamemnon easily convinces Menelaus to kill the wounded Prince Adrastus
because the times were “uncivilized” and “Mankind was not united by the
Bonds of a rational Society” (TE, vii, p. 326n). The heroes’ regular insults
to the dead and dying are “barbarous” (TE, viii, p. 475n); Achilles’ murder
of twelve Trojan prisoners to honour Patroclus’ death was sanctioned by
vulgar Greek religion (TE, viii, p. 423n); Achilles’ wretched treatment of
the dead Hector deservedly has been condemned by ancients and moderns
(TE, viii, p. 476n).
Pope sums up some of these objections in his Preface and its disagree-
ment with the avid Homerophile and pre-eminent classicist Madame Anne

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Lefèvre Dacier to whom Pope is gratefully indebted in his notes. Defects like
the gross representation of the gods and the vicious manners of the heroes
“proceed wholly from the Nature” of Homer’s Times (TE, vii, p. 13), and its
theology so inferior to revealed scripture’s God who is “all Perfection, Jus-
tice, and Beneficence” (TE, vii, p. 402n). Pope cannot agree with his French
colleague’s “strange Partiality to Antiquity” in which the more the modern
world deviates from the ancient the worse it is. He asks about the Greeks:
“Who can be so prejudiced in their Favour as to magnify the Felicity of
those Ages, when a Spirit of Revenge and Cruelty, join’d with the practice of
Rapine and Robbery, reign’d thro’ the World, when no Mercy was shown
but for the sake of Lucre, when the greatest Princes were put to the Sword,
and their Wives and Daughters made Slaves and Concubines?” (TE, vii,
p. 14). Such sensible remarks contributed to Pope’s gradual reconsideration
of the role of the ancient classical world as a source of positive imitation and
consequent praise.
The years of Pope’s precocious poetic advances also were part of the
famous Anglo-French, if not pan-European, battle between the Ancients and
the Moderns.3 Swift’s Tale of a Tub and Battle of the Books (1704) were
among the chief British responses. Madame Dacier’s prose translation and
annotation of The Iliad (1711) and her Des causes de la corruption du goust
(1714) were among the chief French responses. By translating, annotating,
and generally praising Homer, Pope aligned himself with the Ancients, but
alignment scarcely denoted congruence. One cannot read either Swift or
Madame Dacier without being aware of the Ancients’ basic assumption:
mankind was in regular mental, spiritual, and physical decline from its
classical peak. Pope also feared, and in the final Dunciad portrayed, the
dreadful fragility of culture. Unlike the Ancients, he nonetheless recognized
the liberating and enriching value of commerce and modern progress and
rejuvenation.
In An Essay on Criticism, for example, he characterizes and rejects literary
Calvinism. Some esteem only the Ancients or the Moderns, thus making
“Wit, like Faith” applicable “To one small Sect, and All are damn’d beside”
(396–7; TE, i, p. 285):

Meanly they seek the Blessing to confine,

And force that Sun but on a Part to Shine;
Which not alone the Southern Wit sublimes,
But ripens Spirits in cold Northern Climes;
Which from the first has shone on Ages past,
Enlights the present, and shall warm the last.
(398–402; TE, i, p. 286)

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Similarly, in Windsor-Forest Pope combines the biblical expansion of the

human soul through trade, from Isaiah, Chapter 60, with Virgil’s Geor-
gics of Roman pacific stability. “Sacred Peace!” (355; TE, i, p. 185) evokes
the glories of a pax Britannica after successful completion of the terrible
War of the Spanish Succession. Then “Unbounded Thames shall flow for
all Mankind” (398; TE, i, p. 191), the exchange of national commerce indi-
cates the exchange of war for peace, British freedom both morally unifies the
world and establishes national government for proper and secure nations.
Discord, Pride, Terror, Care, Ambition, Vengeance, Envy, Persecution, Fac-
tion, Rebellion, and other Furies all are sent to Hell: “Oh stretch thy Reign,
fair Peace! From Shore to Shore, | Till Conquest cease, and Slav’ry be no
more” (406–22; TE, i, p. 192). This, alas temporary, optimistic vision was
inconsistent with the Ancients’ regular assumption of progressive decay. In
these respects Pope clearly was a defector to the Moderns and their reserva-
tions regarding classical virtues. Pope further made these reservations clear
regarding Rome in “Messiah A Sacred Eclogue, In Imitation of Virgil’s Pol-
lio” (1717) – the fourth Georgic as improved by the Old Testament Isaiah
as seen through a Christian perspective. The adaptation was written, Pope
says, “with this particular view, that the reader by comparing the several
thoughts might see how far the images and descriptions of the Prophet are
superior to those of the Poet” (TE, i, p. 111).
Pope’s defection was aided by his reading in the best of British literature
as well as the Bible. He admired Milton’s Paradise Lost and observed how in
comparable scenes “Milton has far surpass’d both the Greek and Roman”
epic poets (TE, ix, p. 419n). He also extends poetic to moral superiority. In
a note to The Iliad Pope harshly discusses one of Homer’s licentious sexual
episodes between Jupiter and Juno: “That which seems in Homer an impious
Fiction, becomes a moral Lesson in Milton” (TE, ix, p. 182n). He makes
such alterations as are “agreeable to a Christian Poet” (TE, vii, p. 400n).
By 1725 Pope also had published his edition of Shakespeare’s works. In
spite of their demonstrable flaws, the dramas taught Pope that Shakespeare’s
“Excellencies” have “justly and universally elevated [him] above all other
Dramatic Writers.” Pope apparently agrees with and quotes Ben Jonson’s
praise: English Shakespeare transcends Sophocles, Euripides, and Aeschylus
(Prose, ii, p. 19). He also transcends Homer himself, who was indebted to
Egyptian learning, whereas Shakespeare as an original drew directly “from
the fountains of Nature . . . The Poetry of Shakespear was Inspiration indeed:
he is not so much an Imitator, as an Instrument, of Nature; and ’tis not so just
to say that he speaks from her, as that she speaks thro’ him” (Prose, ii, p. 13).
We have then, what might be called moral, conceptual, theological, and
national reasons for Pope to modify his youthful judgment regarding “all that

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is left us is to recommend our productions by the imitation of the Ancients.”

There was another perhaps even more important reason for Pope’s later
denigration of the chief Augustan poets – namely, the political tar that had
smeared the often imitated, always taught, and, as poets, almost always
admired Virgil and Horace.

Augustan politics
Eighteenth-century Whigs and Tories shared a dominant assumption:
Britain’s limited constitutional monarchy maintained freedom by its jealous
balance among the Crown, Lords, and Commons. So long as each branch of
government adhered to its proper role, Britons would enjoy liberty impossi-
ble for less enlightened arbitrary governments like those of France or Spain.
Ancient Rome provided the major historical contrast and affirmation. As
eighteenth-century readers knew from the first book both of Tacitus’ Annals
and History, among numerous other sources, destructively seminal civil wars
initiated by Julius Caesar culminated in Augustus Caesar’s triumphs – over
Mark Antony’s resistance, over Cleopatra’s Egypt, and most ominously over
Rome’s own senate. That once free republican body soon became a pawn
of the Augustan principate which destroyed earlier liberty and initiated the
gradual decline of the Roman empire. The generation of great post-civil
war poets was inherited from the declining republic and was not properly
Augustan. As Thomas Blackwell the younger said in his overheated Mem-
oirs of the Court of Augustus (Edinburgh, 1753–63), Virgil, Horace, and
others “learned the Language of Liberty, and took the masterly Tincture,
which that Goddess inspires both in phrase and Sentiment. This gave them
that Freedom of Thought and Strength of Stile, which is only to be acquired
under Her Influence . . . The Roman Composition began to degenerate even
under Augustus” (iii, pp. 467–8). The true Augustan thus is the verbally
impure and sexually licentious Ovid, who better reflected the decline of let-
ters that would begin more dramatically under Augustus’ wretched successor
Tiberius.
Indeed, one of the commonplaces of Roman history was that Augustus
intentionally chose Tiberius, knowing that he would be a bad caesar and a
tyrant, but would make Augustus look the better by contrast. From Tacitus
forward, however, Augustus himself is viewed as the person most responsible
for the collapse of the Roman empire and Roman letters. Thomas Gordon’s
politicized discourses on Tacitus precede his translation (1728) and make
plain that under Augustus “Truth was treason” and no one “would ven-
ture to speak it.” Conyers Middleton’s Life of . . . Cicero (1741) later adds
that after Augustus’ complicity in the murder of Cicero “and the ruin of the

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Republic,” Roman oratory would only make “panegyrics, and servile com-
pliments to . . . Tyrants,” certainly including Augustus himself.4 The highly
Tacitean Edward Gibbon puts it this way in his first published work, the
Essai sur l’étude de la littérature (1761): Augustus was a bloody tyrant, sus-
pected of cowardice, and when he came to the throne he made Romans forget
that they ever had been free. Chapter 3 of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the
Roman Empire (1776) argues that Augustus usurped power, annihilated the
hitherto balanced constitution, and ruined Rome. As he says at the beginning
of Chapter 8, “from the reign of Augustus to the time of Alexander Severus,
the enemies of Rome were in her bosom; the tyrants, and the soldiers.”5
As others pointed out, Rome’s ample bosom included those like Virgil and
Horace who were so willing to praise the tyrant and his political agenda.
Such views were part of Pope’s intellectual ancestry and posterity. What
would Pope and his contemporaries committed to British “liberty” make
of those who supported tyranny, censorship, the absorption of the arts into
government propaganda, and the suppression of opposition? Such responses
fell into three sometimes overlapping responses.
One response was to grant that Augustus was an enslaving tyrant, but that
since the republic was lost Virgil and Horace concluded that, as Dryden said,
national self-interest required reconciling the people to their new master and
thereby “to confirm their obedience to him; and by that obedience to make
them happy.” A second less quietist response was to grant that Virgil and
Horace were republicans at heart who knew that they were defeated and that
brutal Augustus needed reform. They thus drew idealized pictures of what he
should be in hopes that life would imitate art. In 1714 Samuel Cobb observed
that Virgil did not believe in arbitrary government, and poetically advised
Augustus “how to behave himself in his New Monarchy, so as to gain the
Affections of his Subjects.”6 A third response was more consistent with the
highly charged partisan history and literature of the earlier eighteenth cen-
tury and one in which Pope and many of his contemporaries believed, namely
that in so handsomely painting Augustus, Horace, and Virgil distorted
truth, history, and the proper relationship of the throne to letters – which
should support loyal opposition and not absorb it by threats, patronage, and
flattery.
Even elements of the Whig court party and the smaller opposition Tory
party shared that vision. It was, though, especially congenial to the “Patriot”
opposition to Sir Robert Walpole, whom Pope also satirized and whom he
regarded as the Hanoverians’ agent of darkness. To flatter the court and
throne, he contended, is to flatter wickedness. Pope was demonstrably influ-
enced by this view. In the summer of 1739 he told Joseph Spence that Virgil
was a “slavish” political writer whose Aeneid did not have one honest line.7

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The author of Plain Truth, or Downright Dunstable (1740) sums up much

of the moral outrage regarding such politically incorrect poetry. He recog-
nizes that Horace and Virgil are self-interested “flattering, soothing, Tools”
(p. 13) who were “Fit to praise Tyrants, and gull Fools” (pp. 15–16). They
are so dangerous to the personal and political state that banishment is the
best alternative. “Away with ’em, I can scarce bear ’em,” he proclaims in the
highest of high dudgeon:

In monstrous times, such Weeds thrive best,

They ornament a Tyrant’s Nest.
They serve to lull and blunt the Pain,
Of vilest Crime, still hide such Stain,
In Luxury, they thrive amain,
Of Tyranny bear up the Train. (p. 17)

There was a significant variation on this theme, one to which Pope also
responded by means of characterizing his own version of a redefined Horace.
The Walpole administration used its Daily Gazetteer to counter tirades
in opposition newspapers like The Craftsman. On 9 December 1739 the
Gazetteer makes plain that its Horace supported the government and its
schemes for censorship of political excess, as well as its religion, laws, and
other men of letters. Pope, in contrast, merely writes seditious and ridiculous
“Billingsgate” very different from “the Verses of that fine, courtly Satyrist.”
In the same year and again thereafter, Thomas Newcomb joins the adminis-
tration writers on this theme and invents a poem written by Horace from the
underworld, in which he scolds Pope the “Pert meddling Bard” for praising
traitors, maligning Walpole and George II, and being resolutely un-Horatian.
The spectral Horace laments that it would destroy his fame “Cou’d it be
wrote upon thy Grave, | That P – and H o r ac e thought alike.”8
However crude, these were among the more modest attacks on Pope for
being unlike the Horace he pretended to use as an argument on authority. As
we have seen, in a sense they were correct, for Pope redefines Horace into an
opposition, Juvenalian, satirist of vice and national corruption. Indeed, he
makes plain that the Walpole administration has so captured Horace that he
no longer is suitable for satire at all. In the first Dialogue of the Epilogue to the
Satires (1738) Pope creates an administration spokesman who characterizes
its Horace as radically unlike his Popean-Juvenalian counterpart. Walpole’s
Horace “was delicate, was nice,” and “lash’d no sort of Vice” (11–12; TE,
iv, p. 298). He would gloss over serious criminality in court, town, church,
and international relations, ingratiate himself with the crown and protect –
screen – the Prime Minister from investigation of his illicit deeds:

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His sly, polite, insinuating stile

Could please at Court, and make Au g u s t u s smile:
An artful Manager, that crept between
His Friend and Shame, and was a kind of Screen.
(19–22; TE, iv, p. 298)

It is clear why Pope’s own epitaph divorces himself from the shameful Horace
and Virgil: each had been labeled the complicit agent of tyranny.
The further Pope moved into the 1730s, the harsher his satires became.
Several of these were imitations of Horace, adaptations of specific satires
or epistles made relevant to Pope’s own circumstances and times. He would
print the English on the right side of the page and the Latin on the left. He
could leave certain areas blank on either side to suggest meaningful absence;
he could print lines to which he drew attention in special typeface; he could
show that unlike the “real” Horace he was in opposition and not in alliance
with his Crown. On the one hand, that was a shame, since as Pope said early
in the harmonious and optimistic Windsor-Forest, “Peace and Plenty tell, a
St ua rt reigns” (42; TE, i, p. 152), and he felt more comfortable with that
dynasty than with the German Hanoverians supported by Walpole and his
Whigs. Pope nonetheless had no choice but to offer an alternative Horace.
He would adapt his dialog form, modulation of voice, poetic address to
powerful aristocrats, and rural seat that becomes an emblem of national
peace. He would also raise his voice, converse with aristocrats out of power,
not those in power, and make plain that he was hostile to the present throne’s
policies.
These last traits are uncongenial to perceived Horatian satire. In 1693
John Dryden had harshly described Horace as “a temporizing poet, a well-
mannered Court slave, and a man who is . . . ever decent, because he is
naturally servile.” In 1763 Edward Gibbon also characterized Horace, Virgil,
and their contemporaries as singers “of the ruin of their country, and the
triumph of its oppressors . . . Juvenal alone never prostitutes his muse” and
always arraigns “the folly and tyranny of those masters of the world and
their deputies.”9 That Juvenalianism is the tone and the message Pope also,
though not uniformly, uses in his nominal imitations of Horace. That also is
why both personal enemies and writers for the Walpole administration often
savaged him as being a ridiculous parody of Horace, who was an ally not an
enemy of his monarch and whose sympathetic poetry they themselves would
embody.
Pope’s self-image and value for opposition politics required a redefinition
of satire and of epic. He achieves the first by means of Juvenal, and in the
dialog form often Persius (ad 34–62), who created an opponent incapable

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of recognizing truth or reason. Pope raises the stakes, decibels, and satiric
conventions – from folly to vice, from accommodation to opposition, from
support to resistance of his Crown and culture. He already had begun that
process of redefining the epic by lamenting the dishonest and slavish, though
poetically stunning, Aeneid. He would finish that process just one year before
his death.

The Augustan Dunciad

We recall that Pope began his career with cultural cohesion. His own poetry
was indebted to the classical poetry it adapted and in ways improved upon.
His final great poem is The Dunciad in Four Books. Windsor-Forest was a
British georgic with Ovidian metamorphoses and specifically local mythol-
ogy and history. The final Rape of the Lock adapts epic devices to British
domestic and rural aristocratic Catholic concerns; it is an heroic poem of
daily life. The notes to The Iliad translation are masterpieces of critical syn-
thesis, as hundreds of scholars and many nations illumine Homer by means
of Pope’s containing imagination and learning. By the early 1740s, however,
Pope can be neither synthetic nor sympathetic in a world that endangers
both his body and his spirit.
Under such circumstances, the classics’ earlier functions are significantly
diminished – as arguments on authority, as norms, as variously excellent
models that must yield to yet better excellences, as receptacles for successful
literary devices that later authors could borrow and comment upon. Instead,
The Dunciad in Four Books combines Virgilian and Miltonic key modes of
proceeding. Pope borrows Virgil’s device of the transfer of power supported
by the gods on behalf of the new founding of imperial Rome: the once
defeated Trojans rise again, are divinely supported, and are fulfilled in the
power of the ideal Caesar Augustus. Pope rejects that assumption, since he
regarded The Aeneid as a great poem but a slavish political document.
He thus adds what had become a familiar device, the addition of a supe-
rior moral and literary statement that at once respects, complements, and
diminishes the power of his classical source. Pope’s epic Augustus now is
George Augustus King of England, for Pope as destructive a political force
as his namesake. Such modern Augustanism unleashes Dulness and offers
a theory of causation. It reverses the Miltonic paradigm of creation, light,
and ultimate design by a benevolent and loving God who is “all Perfection,
Justice, and Beneficence.” Pope’s world now is one of uncreation and, at its
conclusion, of universal darkness burying all as Georgian-Walpolean Dul-
ness makes the moral and cultural rubble so different from the creation and
ultimate forgiveness at the heart of Paradise Lost.

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Devices from The Aeneid suggest that secular government and order are
being destroyed by (George) Augustan power. However important that surely
is, the evocation of Milton makes plain that far more important government
and order are being destroyed – those by the God of creation whose light,
energy, and seminal love are being chucked down a moral and intellectual
sewer. Samuel Johnson’s “Life of Milton” (1779) from his Lives of the Poets
(1779–81) illumines a relevant implication of Pope’s juxtaposition of Mil-
ton and Virgil. Milton’s “subject is the fate of worlds [and] . . . rebellion
against the Supreme King . . . Before the greatness displayed in Milton’s
poem all other greatness shrinks away.”10 Pope thus ends his poetic career
with another absorption of the classic writers whom he adapts and sur-
passes with the help of national art, religion, politics, and his own splendid
and splendidly eclectic genius.

Synthesis
What then can we say about “Pope and the Classics”? The most obvious
answer is that Pope knew classical literature intimately, admired it enor-
mously, was guided by it in many ways, and often sought to adapt its con-
ventions for his own use. He was especially admiring in his earlier years,
when he also became financially independent thanks to the success of his
Homer translations. The world, however, was more complex than young
Alexander Pope had appreciated, and he often was savaged for what he
rightly thought were his poetic and critical virtues. As the Walpole admin-
istration and the Hanoverian monarchy established themselves, he found
himself aligned with what he considered the morally and politically virtuous
opposition to the powerful Prime Minister Sir Robert Walpole. Pope’s chief
allies and intellectual colleagues were Jonathan Swift, Henry St John, Lord
Bolingbroke, and other opposition aristocrats. In the process, Pope learned
to compartmentalize and to continue his affection for Greek and Roman
literary achievement. In each case, however, he distinguished between often
morally or politically unacceptable content, and generally brilliant literary
talent that had given pleasure for thousands of years. In the process as well,
he would redefine some of those poets and their conventions for his own
use. We note in Pope’s epitaph, for example, that he tells only Horace and
Virgil to blush. Pope reluctantly moved to the Juvenalian outrage appropriate
for the satirist he had become, the poet now at odds with his declining cul-
ture, about which he can only protest rather than cure. Further in that pro-
cess, he learned the achievement of his own national transcendent authors.
Pope lacked the dramatic skills to adapt Shakespeare, but he recognized the
strength of “nature” in his works and its power over Greek art. He also knew

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that Milton’s Paradise Lost could serve his purposes in The Dunciad. Pope is
a handsomely copious poet who learns a great deal through his career. One
aspect of those lessons was that there was far more for a modern poet to
do than to recommend himself by the imitation of the ancients, several of
whom he had come to believe were politically or morally unworthy, and no
better than the national models then revered in Britain and becoming better
known on the Continent.
Sometime between 1706 and 1710 Pope gave several lines of poetry to
William Wycherley. He called “Dulness, the safe Opiate of the Mind, | The
last kind Refuge weary Wit can find.” Such Dulness “Is satisfy’d, secure,
and innocent: | No Pains it takes, and no Offence it gives” (1–2; TE, i, p. 5).
Pope’s own practice regarding the classics reverses that witless pattern. He
takes risks, never tires in adapting, rejecting, or praising where appropriate;
he never is satisfied, secure or innocent; and he takes great pains and does
not fear giving offence – certainly including to those who had taken blushing
Horace into their political grasp. For Pope “The Feast of Reason and the
Flow of Soul” (Sat, ii, i 127; TE, iv, p. 17) included judgments on the past,
present, and himself. In some cases those judgments included revision of
earlier views and modes of proceeding.

NOTES
1. Reuben A. Brower, Alexander Pope: The Poetry of Allusion (Oxford: Claren-
don Press, 1959), p. 176; Howard Erskine-Hill, The Augustan Idea in English
Literature (London: Edward Arnold, 1983), p. 325.
2. For the most important discussions of this subject, see Further Reading,
pp. 237–246 below.
3. Many of the French sources of the controversy have been usefully reprinted
in la Querelle des anciens et des modernes xviie–xvii siècles, ed. Anne-Marie
Lecoq (Paris: Gallimard, 2001). For Madame Dacier’s unfortunate argument
with Pope, see Howard D. Weinbrot, “‘What Must the World Think of Me?’
Pope, Madame Dacier, and Homer – The Anatomy of a Quarrel,” in Eighteenth-
Century Contexts: Historical Inquiries in Honor of Phillip Harth, eds. Howard
D. Weinbrot, Peter J. Schakel, and Stephen E. Karian (Madison: University of
Wisconsin Press, 2001), pp. 183–206.
4. Thomas Gordon, The Works of Tacitus, 2 vols. (London, 1728), i, 150; Conyers
Middleton, History of the Life of Marcus Tullius Cicero, 3 vols. (London: Printed
for W. Innys, 1741), ii, pp. 449–50, 534–5.
5. Edward Gibbon, Essai sur l’étude de la littérature: “Tyran sanguinaire,
soupçonné de lâcheté le plus grand des crimes dans un chef de parti, il parvient au
trône, et fait oublier aux républicains qu’ils eussent jamais été libre”: in Miscella-
neous Works of Edward Gibbon, Esq., ed. John Lord Sheffield, 5 vols, (London:
J. Murray 1814), iv, pp. 89–90; Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and
Fall of the Roman Empire, ed. David Womersley, 3 vols. (London: The Penguin
Press, 1994), i, p. 213.

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6. John Dryden, “Discourse on Epick Poetry” (Preface to Virgil), in John Dryden:

Of Dramatic Poesy and other Critical Essays, ed. George Watson, 2 vols. (New
York: Dutton, 1962), ii, p. 239; Samuel Cobb, Clavis Virgiliana: or New Obser-
vations on Poetry, Especially the Epic (London: Printed for E. Curll, 1714), p. 8.
7. Anecdotes, i, pp. 229–30. Pope there also regards Virgil’s first georgic and its
flattery of Augustus as gross and “mean,” but nobly expressed.
8. Newcomb’s poem appears in The Daily Gazetteer for 16 June 1739, and in New-
comb’s A Miscellaneous Collection of Original Poems (London, 1740), pp. 52–6.
This was among the many attacks upon Pope’s inadequate Horatianism.
9. John Dryden, “Discourse on the Original and Progress of Satire,” Preface to
Juvenal, in Of Dramatic Poesy and Other Critical Essays, ii, p. 131; Edward
Gibbon, “Extraits de mon Journal,” in Miscellaneous Works, ii, 103–4.
10. Johnson, LOP, i, p. 172.

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 7
D AV I D FA I R E R

Pope and the Elizabethans

In narratives of English literary history Pope has tended to be seen as a fig-

ure of discontinuity rather than one who finds his natural place in the native
tradition. By the end of the eighteenth century, Milton was the acknowl-
edged heir to the poetic inheritance of the age of Shakespeare and Spenser,
while Pope represented the triumph of neoclassical refinement after an ear-
lier “barbarity.” In many ways this took Pope at his own valuation: he
accepted the prevailing view that the achievement of the Elizabethans was
marred by incorrectness, faulty versification and lapses of taste, and that
only with Waller, Dryden, and Addison had the English language reached
perfection.1 There certainly could be no return to styles of the past or to
an obsolete English. The very title of Pope’s The Fourth Satire of Dr. John
Donne, Dean of St. Paul’s, Versifyed assumes that Donne’s poem cannot
claim to be “verse” at all. Unlike the ancient writers or those of the Restora-
tion, Elizabethan poets were not his stylistic models, and we look in vain for
any acknowledgment, public or private, of the scale of his indebtedness to
them.
But a stylistic influence (Waller, say) might be worn more lightly than
one that fills the imagination. In his youth Pope read Elizabethan poets,
along with much else, during his “great reading period” before the age of
twenty-one (Anecdotes, i, p. 20). He read The Faerie Queene at “about
twelve” and throughout his life he loved Spenser, for all his obsoleteness
of language; later as a translator of Homer he recognised in George Chap-
man’s old version, in spite of its stylistic “Fustian,” “a daring fiery Spirit that
animates his Translation” (Anecdotes, i, p. 182; Prose, i, pp. 250–1). Anima-
tion in its various meanings is a characteristic feature of Pope’s writings at
those moments when he is drawing on Elizabethan materials. He could also
never conceal an underlying disappointment that the Restoration of 1660
had made poetry too “easy,” in every sense of the word. He scorned “the
Mob of Gentlemen who wrote with Ease” and who fluttered round a corrupt

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court (Ep, ii.i, 108). For all its rust and roughness, Elizabethan poetry took
shape within a Renaissance world in which writers wrestled with ideas and
valued principles. Readers of Erasmus and Montaigne felt themselves part of
a European-wide culture rather than a court coterie. Verses were much more
than “the affair of idle men who write in their closets, and of idle men who
read there” (Prose, i, p. 290). It is evident that many Renaissance ideas were
more than congenial to Pope: they spoke to him at a deep level about things
essential to human nature. He valued humanist argument with its skeptical
wit and its respect for individual experience and intelligent conscience. But
it is clear from his poetry that he also relished another side of Renaissance
culture, the rich symbolic language that the Elizabethan world in particular
offered him. It fed an art in which truth was embedded in symbol, and where
poetic meaning shared an iconography with politics and philosophy. There
was still a common allegorical language. “Idea” had not yet shrunk to items
in a Cartesian a priori logic, and could be celebrated by sonneteers. A field of
inherited symbolic reference was available to poetry, through which layers
of allusion and suggestion might be worked.
An example of how complex this layering could be is Windsor-Forest
(1713). It is a highly topical poem, but its political theme (supporting the
Tory Peace of Utrecht) is structured by a historical topography that was first
used to celebrate the England of Elizabeth the First. Pope draws directly
from Britain’s foundational national history, William Camden’s Britannia
(1586), and his early reading of this (probably in Gibson’s expanded 1695
edition) influenced the structure and imagery of his most patriotic poem.
Like Camden, Pope constructs national history through local topography.
In Britannia individual small-scale histories and ecologies find themselves
mapped onto a united and resourceful “Britannia,” and the account of each
shire is organized by its main river, which is traced along its course, taking in
tributaries as it goes. This thematic idea left its imprint on the river-imagery
of Windsor-Forest, in which Pope’s native stream of the Loddon, along with
other tributaries, swells the national river and pays its “tribute.” It is an
Elizabethan patriotic iconography that Pope knew well, one that includes
Spenser’s extended description of the marriage of Thames and Medway (The
Faerie Queene [1596], iv.xi,29), Michael Drayton’s poetic mapping of the
nation in his topographical epic Poly-Olbion (1612–22), and Camden’s own
poem, quoted in Britannia, on the symbolic marriage of the Thame and the
Isis.2
Behind Pope’s graceful compliments to Queen Anne in Windsor-Forest
are several hinted allusions to Elizabeth I, a figure with whom Anne wished
to be associated and whose motto, Semper eadem (“always the same”), she
adopted.3 But the typology becomes strained when Pope evokes Diana the

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huntress, goddess of chastity, and for a moment he sounds like an Elizabethan

poet celebrating his Virgin Queen:

Nor envy Windsor! Since thy Shades have seen

As bright a Goddess, and as chast a Queen;
Whose Care, like hers, protects the Sylvan Reign,
The Earth’s fair Light, and Empress of the Main.
(161–4)

Anne’s fondness for hunting seems hardly enough to qualify her for the Diana
role, given her seventeen children; and from a passage like this the reader can
sense how in later years Pope will find satiric potential in this Elizabethan
allegorical mode. On his return to the Thames in The Dunciad the tributary
has changed, and the Loddon has been replaced by Fleet Ditch, who “with
disemboguing streams | Rolls the large tribute of dead dogs to Thames” (ii,
271–2). The Dunciad similarly functions as a sump for receiving grotesque
versions of many of the symbolic images that Pope had earlier drawn from
the Elizabethans.
Of all the Elizabethan writers it was the poet of The Faerie Queene whom
Pope absorbed most deeply.4 As he remarked to John Hughes, who had sent
him his newly published edition of Spenser’s Works in six volumes (1715):
“Spenser has ever been a favourite poet to me; he is like a mistress whose
faults we see, but love her with ’em all.”5 Pope’s self-conscious fondness
here (in the earlier sense of “excessive attachment”) represents a Spenserian
ambivalence of head and heart, a divided response that underlies many of the
vivid allegorical scenes in Pope’s poetry; it informs his creative engagement
with excess and indulgence, his sense of how celebration and satire might
become entangled, and imagination bring delight and danger.6 Such duali-
ties are a feature of Pope’s visual exuberance as a poet, and the Spenserian
moments in his work are often those in which poetic qualities are in tension
with a satiric judgment, aesthetics with morality. As well as being an imagi-
native stimulus to his eighteenth-century readers, Spenser was also the great
moral poet, who declares in the opening invocation to The Faerie Queene:
“Fierce warres and faithful loves shall moralize my song,” a phrase which
reminds us that Pope’s boast of himself in Epistle to Arbuthnot, “That not
in Fancy’s Maze he wander’d long, | But stoop’d to Truth, and moraliz’d his
song” (340–1), is also a renewed commitment to Spenser.7
Pope, like his Elizabethan predecessor, was fascinated by the spaciousness
of the human mind, its labyrinths, locked rooms and inviting doorways,
where hope, fear, and desire are shaped into images. He is aware of these as
sites of creativity as well as delusion. When, in the revised version of The
Dunciad, the goddess Dulness tells the ecstatic Cibber, “what thou seek’st

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is in thee! Look, and find | Each Monster meets his likeness in thy mind”
(Dunciad, iii, 251–2), Pope is recalling many allegorical scenes in The Faerie
Queene where the heroes are tested by their own human vulnerability, and
their inner struggle is pictured as a confrontation with giants, monsters,
enchanters and tempters. In the “Cave of Poverty and Poetry” (Dunciad, i,
33–84) and the “Cave of Spleen” in The Rape of the Lock, Pope creates spaces
like Malbecco’s cave or Phantastes’ upper room in the House of Alma, cham-
bers where imagination does its dubious work (Faerie Queene, iii.x, 57–60,
ii.ix, 50–2); and in the great crowd scenes in The Temple of Fame (1715)
and The Dunciad (1728–43) he explores the magnetism of ambition, pride,
and desire such as Guyon encounters in the cave of Mammon or Britomart
in the House of Busyrane (Faerie Queene, ii.vii, iii.xi-xii). In The Temple of
Fame Pope’s goddess holds her followers in thrall like Mammon’s daughter
tantalizing aspirants with the golden chain of ambition (“there, as in glister-
ing glory she did sitt, | She held a great gold chaine ylinked well . . . | And all
that preace did rownd about her swell | To catchen hold of that long chaine,”
ii.vii, 46). In revisiting the scene in The Dunciad Pope darkens Spenser’s satire
on the Elizabethan court into a nightmare of Walpole’s Britain, where the
goddess Dulness assumes aspects both of the wicked enchanter Archimago
and the false Duessa,8 Spenser’s dazzling female emblem of the ways “by
which deceipt doth maske in visour faire, | And cast her colours, died deepe
in graine, | To seeme like truth” (Faerie Queene, i.vii, 1):

She, tinsel’d o’er in robes of varying hues,

With self-applause her wild creation views;
Sees momentary monsters rise and fall,
And with her own fools-colours gilds them all.
(Dunciad, i, 81–4)

The Dunciad has frequently been discussed in its epic context, but other
ironies come to the fore when it is seen in terms of allegorical romance.
In Pope’s satire Spenser’s imagined Britain, the “land of Faery,” is doomed
because the hero himself is under the enchanter’s spell, incapable of reading
the many symbolic images of the poem: there is no diamond shield, as there
is in Spenser’s poem, to expose “all that was not such as seemd in sight”
(Faerie Queene, i.vii, 35). Illusion is no longer an allegorical shadowing of
Truth, but has supplanted it, so that Pope’s monsters become crowd pleasers.
Rather than striving to “seek for another Meaning under these wild Types
and Shadows,”9 his audience applauds them as special effects. The age of
Dunce the Second has lost the code, and the moral bearings that go with it.
For Pope, influences from the Elizabethan period were not superficial ones.
He did not play with images and ignore the system of ideas that gave them

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meaning. It is evident, for example, that especially in his earlier career, from
1714 to 1717, he was remarkably responsive to Renaissance conceptualiza-
tions of body and mind. Several of the best known poems of this period, The
Rape of the Lock, Eloisa to Abelard, and Elegy to the Memory of an Unfor-
tunate Lady, draw on humoral pathology and faculty psychology, and on
the old concepts of psychomachia and metempsychosis, which were popular
among Elizabethan writers. After half a century of the Royal Society and
the new experimental science this may seem anachronistic, but Pope and his
fellow Scriblerians were no scientific “moderns”. At their centre was Dr John
Arbuthnot, a physician whose theory of the human constitution rested on a
physiology of the four bodily humors, which he offered to the public on the
authority of the classical medical tradition of Hippocrates and Galen: see An
Essay Concerning the Nature of Aliments, and the Choice of Them, Accord-
ing to the different Constitutions of Human Bodies (1731). The Scriblerian
farce, Three Hours after Marriage (1717), on which Gay collaborated with
Pope and Arbuthnot, is a Jonsonian comedy of humors partly modeled on
The Silent Woman (1609), and it featured as its newly married couple a pair
of actors who were famous for the equivalent roles of Morose and Epicœne
in Jonson’s play.10 When Dr Fossile tells his wife that he has chosen her “for
the natural Conformity of our Constitutions . . . thou art hot and moist in
the Third Degree, and I myself cold and dry in the First” (Three Hours after
Marriage, iii, 313–15) it is Arbuthnot who is the butt of an affectionate joke.
It seems that Pope was sympathetic to Arbuthnot’s humoral theory, given the
following detailed analysis of music’s power to heal the human body: “as
the musical notes move the air,” Pope writes, “so the air moves the inward
spirits, and the humours of the body, which are the seat of diseases; so that
by this new motion they may be condensed, rarefied, dissipated or expell’d,
according as they are agitated or influenc’d by the concussion of the musical
notes.”11
This intimate, troubled relationship between matter and spirit, drawn from
Renaissance thinking, is a feature of The Rape of the Lock (1714). Pope’s
playful system of elemental spirits is a comic tour de force, but through
the sylphs and gnomes he is also articulating an allegorical emotional con-
flict about girlhood and maturity, in which the melancholy humors prove
victorious.12 Belinda’s splenetic “inward spirits” are Umbriel’s concern, and
it is these that invade the surface world of ritualized beauty over which
the sylphs preside. Scholars have found a range of Renaissance analogs for
the poem’s mythology, drawn from the miniature “faery” poetry of Dray-
ton’s Nymphidia, Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Spenser’s
Muiopotmos or the Fate of the Butterfly, his Faerie Queene, and Ariosto’s
“Limbo of Vanity”;13 the idealization of Belinda’s beauty has parallels in the

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imagery of Elizabethan sonnets, and the poem repeatedly echoes Spenser’s

lyrical bridal celebrations, Prothalamion and Epithalamion, the first of which
was written for the marriage of the Second Lord Petre, great-grandfather of
Pope’s Baron.14 Beneath these various reminiscences, however, at the core of
The Rape of the Lock is a conceptual structure that is indebted to Renaissance
notions about how thoughts and emotions work. Pope took this seriously
because, unlike the more recent organic theories of the brain (concerning
nerve fibres, “medulary matter”, etc.),15 it left open areas of choice and
moral responsibility. Renaissance faculty psychology, with its hierarchical
view of the mind, placed reason as a separate faculty presiding over issues
of truth, while imagination delighted in shows.16 The Scriblerian satirists
mocked the emergent organic theories because they undermined the vital
responsibility of rational judgment – what Pope in An Essay on Man calls
“the God within the mind” (ii, 204). Just as Jonson’s obsessive “humour”
characters are swayed by their imaginations and emotions, so the objects
of Pope’s satires tend to be people who allow desires and fancies to pursue
their own ends. When Pope writes to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, “I fancy
myself, in my romantic thoughts & distant admiration of you, not unlike
the man [Dapper] in the Alchymist that has a passion for the Queen of the
Faeries,” he is reflecting ruefully on his own capacity for Jonsonian self-
deception (Corr, i, p. 439). Judgment finally comes at the end of Jonson’s
comedies, and in the 1717 text of The Rape of the Lock Belinda is given a
moment of choice between being fancifully governed by the dark humors of
her spleen or heeding the sensible judgment of Clarissa, who reminds her
that in the real world “Locks will turn to grey” (v, 26). In this physiological
aspect of The Rape of the Lock Pope is heir to a Miltonic-humanist tradition
deriving from the Renaissance (Adam instructs Eve in this theory, Paradise
Lost, v, 100–13).
Elizabethan neoplatonic thought was another strong influence on Pope’s
pre-1717 poetry, and in the final stellification of Belinda’s lock, celebrating
her beauty as eternal divine Idea, he plays lightly with a set of concepts
that meant a lot to him. In his own life Pope felt acutely the constrictions
of the body (his “Carcase,” as he called it) and the potential freedom of
his soul,17 and these tensions are played out in Eloisa to Abelard (1717).
But Eloisa’s monologue also recalls the medieval psychomachia, or dueling
for possession of the soul. The idea remained popular on the Elizabethan
stage (in Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus) and it shaped Shakespeare’s Sonnet
144 (“Two loves I have”). In Pope’s version Eloisa is enacting internally the
kind of psychomachia represented in Marlowe’s play when the good and
evil angels compete for Faustus’s soul: “Come”, she tells Abelard, “if thou

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dar’st, all charming as thou art! | Oppose thy self to heav’n; dispute my
heart” (281–2):

Snatch me, just mounting, from the blest abode,

Assist the Fiends and tear me from my God!
No, fly me, fly me! Far as Pole from Pole;
Rise Alps between us! (287–90)

It is the poem’s emotional climax, the equivalent of Faustus’s terrified words

in the final scene: “O, I’ll leap up to my God! Who pulls me down? . . . |
Mountains and hills, come, come and fall on me, | And hide me from the
heavy wrath of God! | No, no!”18
Pope’s classical model for Eloisa to Abelard is Ovid’s Heroides, but he
filters this source through the Renaissance heroic epistles of Michael Drayton
and Samuel Daniel.19 Ovid’s heroines give vent to surging passions (usually
in imagery of sea, wind, and sails), but such movement is not checked by
a contrary idea of confinement. This Pope found in Elizabethan versions
of the genre where neoplatonic elements of psychic enclosure parallel the
soul’s imprisonment in the body. Animation pulls against constriction. A
passage like the following from Daniel’s A Letter sent from Octavia to her
Husband Marcus Antonius (1599) catches a sense of emotional suffocation
very similar to Eloisa’s:

We, in this prison of our selves confin’d,

Must here shut up with our owne passions live,
Turn’d in upon us, and denied to find
The vent of outward meanes that might relieve:
That they alone must take up all our mind,
And no room left us, but to think and grieve.
(137–42)

Behind Daniel’s imagery, as behind Pope’s, is the neoplatonic concept of the

“vent” through which the soul could glimpse its freedom beyond the mortal
body. The idea is memorably caught by Pope in Elegy to the Memory of an
Unfortunate Lady (1717): “Most souls, ’tis true, but peep out once an age,
| Dull sullen pris’ners in the body’s cage” (18–19). Here he draws on the
imagery of the caged soul common in emblem books, like Francis Quarles’s
Emblems (1635), v, 10, where a girl is pictured cooped up in a birdcage
(“My Soule is like a Bird; my Flesh, the Cage”). The image of the soul as
a “sullen” prisoner was perhaps suggested to Pope by a passage in Donne’s
Second Anniversary: “no stubborn, sullen anchorite | . . . dwells so foully as
our souls, in their first-built cells. | Think in how poor a prison thou dost

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lie”.20 Pope accepted the theory of metempsychosis, or the progress of the

immortal soul through a series of bodies (including animal and vegetable).
It was, said Spence, “a settled notion with him”; and Donne’s extraordinary
poem about a migrating soul, Metempsychosis (1601), was a favourite of his
(see Anecdotes, i, pp. 188, 239). Part of the mystery of Pope’s “unfortunate
lady” is the way she hovers between soul and body, a “beck’ning ghost” and
a “heap of dust,” a woman he knows intimately but who has utterly eluded
him. Pope’s enigmatic elegy places her alongside women like Donne’s Eliza-
beth Drury (the subject of his Funeral Elegy and the two Anniversaries), or
Ben Jonson’s Lady Jane Pawlet, celebrated as released souls who leave a mys-
tery reverberating behind them. Pope’s dramatic opening (“What beck’ning
ghost . . .?”) was probably suggested by the first lines of Jonson’s elegy on
Lady Pawlet: “What gentle Ghost, besprent with April dew, | Hayles me, so
solemnly, to yonder Yew? | And beckning wooes me?”21
The restlessness of the human soul is a motif that gives a protean energy
to Pope’s writing, whether it is in the “escapes of soul” of his intimate
correspondence,22 in his sketch of Flavia in Epistle to a Lady, in Eloisa’s
struggle, or parodically in the Peri Bathous and the wayward energies of
the dunces. It is a mark of humanity’s incurable inability to rest content.
We are buffeted about by passions and affections, and never able to possess
our souls quietly. Such restlessness is evident throughout An Essay on Man
(1733–4), a poem that is infused with Renaissance reworkings of classical
thought. Behind Pope’s proverbial line, “Hope springs eternal in the human
breast,” is an image of the soul longing to leave its prison: “The soul, uneasy
and confin’d from home, | Rests and expatiates in a life to come” (i, 95–8).
Life is not a myriad of independent organisms, but the sum of beings shar-
ing a divine essence: “All are but parts of one stupendous whole, | Whose
body, Nature is, and God the soul” (i, 267–8). Body is temporal, mortal,
part of nature, but for a spell this uncomfortable transitory being is our
lodging-place. In this context, the difficult issue of knowing oneself becomes
the starting-point for moral action – which means understanding one’s lim-
itations as a tiny part of nature but also one’s infinite potential as a piece
of divinity. In such passages Pope is close to the neoplatonism of Sir John
Davies, whose 1599 poem Nosce Teipsum (“know thyself”) was republished
in 1733 with an essay by Thomas Sheridan.
But An Essay on Man draws from a range of philosophical positions, and
when Pope opens Book ii with the exhortation, “Know then thyself,” he
reveals a markedly less reassuring vision. Now the stress is on the human
species as a paradoxical “Chaos of Thought and Passion,” erratic, vulnera-
ble, and also ridiculous. This perspective seems indebted to the Stoic tradition
deriving from Seneca and Epictetus, which advocated a rational mastery over

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the passions. But it is soon evident that Pope is rejecting the apatheia, or culti-
vated indifference to passion, of classical stoicism (“In lazy Apathy let Stoics
boast | Their Virtue fix’d” [ii, 101–2]),23 and is moving to the Neo-Stoicism
of the Elizabethan Renaissance, which was more animated and combative
in its analysis of human nature. Its representative satiric voice is that of John
Marston, whose indignant response, “Preach not the Stoickes patience to
me” (The Scourge of Villanie [1598], ii, 6) reminds us that Christianized
Neo-Stoicism was anxious to distance itself from imputations of spiritual
lethargy. Marston has not previously been linked to An Essay on Man, but
a reader of the The Scourge of Villanie may glimpse beneath its incessant
cynical railing a motif that runs through Pope’s ethical epistles of the 1730s,
and into The Dunciad too: how easily individual fancy and opinion are pre-
ferred to truth. Marston deplores the way the human mind, instead of align-
ing with reason, abuses itself by preferring appearances and shows: “These
are no men, but Apparitions, | Ignes fatui, Glowormes, Fictions, | Meteors,
Ratts of Nilus, Fantasies” (Scourge of Villanie, vii, 13–15). For Marston, a
mind buoyed up with its own comfortable ideas needs to be brought back
to earth: “Opinion mounts this froth unto the skies | Whom judgment’s
reason justly vilifies | . . . Juggling Opinion, thou enchanting witch! | Paint
not a rotten post with colours rich” (Scourge of Villanie, x, 43–4, 61–2).
In An Essay on Man Pope too is conscious of the self-pleasing colors of
imagination, when “Opinion gilds with varying rays | Those painted clouds
that beautify our days” (ii, 283–4). There is nothing dispassionate about
Elizabethan Neo-Stoicism, rather there is a recognition that all mankind
is in this way caught up in its own subjective passions. As Pope says in
Epistle to Cobham (1731): “All Manners take a tincture from our own, | Or
come discolour’d thro’ our Passions shown” (25–6).
The recognition that human beings can see only refractions of the truth,
that certainties and man-made systems are manifestations of pride, and that
to trust in reason or vision alone is to ignore the paradox of our nature,
links the later Pope particularly to the tradition of Renaissance skepticism –
before it became freethinking libertinism. Looking back across the seven-
teenth century with its new clashing certainties of religion, science, politics,
and philosophy, Pope felt more at home intellectually and emotionally with
the earlier humanist inheritance, with what Maynard Mack has called the
“Erasmian virtues of tolerance, moderation, civility, and wit, together with
a learning lightly worn” (Life, p. 81). The two Renaissance men closest to
Pope’s heart were Erasmus and Montaigne, Catholic writers who under-
stood human folly and pride, and steered their way through them, doubt-
ing yet principled, always true to themselves. Pope was “fond of Erasmus’s
Principles in matters of religious opinion,” and he considered writing his

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biography (Anecdotes, i, p. 261). In The Praise of Folly, Erasmus’s scenario

of a world in thrall to a goddess of sublime self-belief who supplies all hopes
and ambitions, we see a prototype for The Dunciad and its vision of univer-
sally misdirected energies. Montaigne’s Essays were another voice of sanity,
“the very best Book for Information of Manners, that has been writ,” Pope
noted inside his copy, “This Author says nothing but what every one feels
att the Heart.” As well as a French edition, he possessed Charles Cotton’s
1685 translation.
The finest of Montaigne’s essays, Pope thought, was “On the Inconstancy
of our Actions” (Anecdotes, i, p. 142), and it was an idea that struck a
chord with his own sense of the “quick whirls, and shifting eddies, of our
minds” (Epistle to Cobham, 30). We are carried along, says Montaigne in
Florio’s 1603 translation, “as things that flote, now gliding gentlie, now
hulling violently . . . We floate and waver between divers opinions: we will
nothing freely, nothing absolutely, nothing constantly.” To underscore his
point Montaigne quotes from Horace’s epistle to Maecenas some lines that
Pope himself adopts when confessing his own inconsistencies to his friend
Bolingbroke:

. . . no Prelate’s Lawn with Hair-shirt lin’d,

Is half so incoherent as my Mind,
When (each Opinion with the next at strife,
One ebb and flow of follies all my Life)
I plant, root up, I build, and then confound,
Turn round to square, and square again to round.
(Ep, i. i, 165–70)

Pope’s Horace is someone at home in the Renaissance as much as Augus-

tan Rome, and Pope hears his voice partly through the tones of writers
like Montaigne and Ben Jonson. In taking Horace as his alter ego in the
1730s, Pope knew that “our English Horace” was a title Jonson had worn
with pride,24 and that in his struggle during the last years of Elizabeth to
recommend Augustan ideals to a corrupt court, he had made Horace his
cultural and moral spokesman. The play Poetaster (1601), set in the Rome
of Augustus, presents Horace as a man of integrity and simple virtue who is
contemptuous of malice, envy, and flattery. The emperor values his honest
judgment: “Thanks, Horace, for thy free and wholesome sharpness | Which
pleaseth Caesar more than servile fawns” (Poetaster, v.i, 94–5.) But at the
end Augustus allows him publicly to administer an emetic to his infuriating
detractor, Crispinus – a scene, I would suggest, that supplied Pope with a
neat Jonsonian precedent for his own similar revenge on Edmund Curll in
1716 (he perhaps smiled at the thought that Crispinus means “curly”).

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When Pope in 1733 chose to imitate Horace’s Satire ii. i, the first of his
series of imitations of Horace during the 1730s, he was offering as his calling
card the same satiric dialogue Jonson had used to assert his Horatian identity
at the end of Act iii of Poetaster. This might be seen as his declaration
of a collateral kinship with Jonson through their Roman ancestor. But the
two poems are different: where Jonson’s is a reasonably faithful translation,
Pope’s imitation moves some distance from the original: he bares more of
his soul, he is more defiant and self-justifying, and he applies to himself the
idealized satiric character that Horace celebrates in his predecessor, Lucilius.
It is a bold and egotistical move. But if Pope’s poem reaches well beyond
the Jonson of 1601, it is only to identify himself more closely with the later
Jonson, and particularly with his “Epistle answering to one that asked to be
Sealed of the Tribe of Ben” (1623). In Pope’s reworking of Satire ii. i, three
interlocking elements are set in place: the circling enemies (libelers, toadies,
cheats), the stockade of intimate friends (the virtuous circle), and the poet’s
self (the inner core of integrity). It is just such a pattern we see in Jonson’s
later epistle, which is built around the nucleus of his own virtue: “Live to
that point I will, for which I am man, | And dwell as in my Center, as I can”
(59–60). In Pope’s imitations of Horace this Jonsonian triple combination
of “myself, my Foes, my Friends” (Pope’s words in Sat, ii.i, 58) forms a
recurring pattern.
In his “versification” of Donne’s satires also, Pope sought out a more
embattled version of the Horatian identity enriched by its Elizabethan
context.25 In his fourth satire Donne develops the humorous street scene
of Horace’s Satire i.ix (his meeting with the garrulous talker) by relocating
it to Elizabeth’s court, and inverting the power relationship. Where Horace
is trying to shake off a hanger-on who envies his status in the establishment,
Donne is an uncomfortable outsider at the edge of the room, watching the
courtly performances and finding himself in danger of being entangled in the
political game. It is clear which situation suited Pope’s case. Donne’s ani-
mated descriptions give Horace a menacing edge (these are men of power):
“He, like to a high stretcht lute string squeakt, ‘O Sir, | ’Tis sweet to talke of
Kings.” Pope responds to this and makes it a gracefully poised performance:

At this, entranc’d, he lifts his Hands and Eyes,

Squeaks like a high-stretch’d Lutestring, and replies:
“Oh ’tis the sweetest of all earthly things
To gaze on Princes, and to talk of Kings!”
(98–101)

This could be the “squeak” of Lord Hervey, or Sporus, in Pope’s version

of Jonson’s “Court-worme”: “In silke | ’Twas brought to court first wrapt,

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and white as milke; | Where, afterwards, it grew a butter-flye”.26 When the

man’s gossip takes a seditious turn, Pope catches Donne’s sudden sense of
unease and fear, and his need as an Elizabethan Catholic to be circumspect:

I fear’d th’Infection slide from him to me,

As in the Pox, some give it to get free;
And quick to swallow me, methought I saw
One of our Giant Statutes ope its Jaw!
(170–3)

The last line, with its vivid image of anti-Catholic persecution, is Donne’s.
Although Pope smooths out what Dryden in his Essay of Dramatic Poesy
called Donne’s “rough cadence,” he retains the striking wit and strength of
thought. To make Donne too “easy” might have compromised his integrity –
as Pope’s Latin epigraph suggests: “We ask whether it was his genius or
the harsh nature of his themes that prevented his verses from flowing more
easily.” These are Horace’s words about Lucilius (Satires, i.x, 56–9), and they
carry the further implication that Donne is the Lucilius to Pope’s Horace.
A darker and more pessimistic vision is also part of Pope’s Renaissance
inheritance, and The Dunciad’s assault on contemporary culture draws on
writers like Marston or the later Jonson who feared that a classically enlight-
ened wisdom was being lost sight of in a world of ephemeral fashions and
shows, fed by an over-active press and a public thirsty for sensation. In The
Dunciad Pope revisits the urban topography of Jonson’s Famous Voyage
(1616), making Fleet Ditch once again a dirty cultural thoroughfare; but he
raises the stakes by using it as a symbol of lost ideals, misdirected energies,
and prurient obsessions. Pope’s satire is also subtly indebted to An Execra-
tion upon Vulcan (1623), a poem in which Jonson indicts a popular taste
that has lost its classical bearings. In response to the burning of his library,
Jonson curses Vulcan, god of fire, for not directing his flames elsewhere at the
mounting heaps of trashy romance and false wit (“fiftie tomes | Of Logog-
riphes, and curious Palindromes”). “These,” Jonson concludes, “. . . Had
made a meale for Vulcan to lick up” (83–4). This vivid image finds its place
in The Dunciad when Dulness’s prophet, Elkanah Settle, looks forward to
her approaching triumph: “From shelves to shelves see greedy Vulcan roll,
| And lick up all their Physic of the Soul” (iii, 81–2). Jonson’s all too real
nightmare becomes Settle’s gleeful vision of a bonfire of the classics.27
The pageantry of The Dunciad draws on the iconography of Renaissance
classicism to create a pessimistic scenario of the loss of a unified culture
informed by the principles of the ancients. The satire is Pope’s equiva-
lent of a disorderly antimasque, but with no final reassertion of order, no

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transformation to light and harmony. Jonson’s Masque of Queens (1609)

opens in hell, where the witches’ dame leads the infernal dance (“Let us . . .
blast the light; | Mix hell with heaven, and make Nature fight | Within
herself; loose the whole hinge of things, | And cause the ends run back
into their springs,” and she calls on Chaos to “strike the world and nature
dead.”28 At the end of the expanded Dunciad this very wish is granted: “Lo!
Thy dread Empire, Chaos! is restor’d” (iv, 653). Where Jonson transforms
the hellish scene to a magnificent House of Fame, from which the voice of
“Heroic Virtue” speaks to dispel the forces of darkness, for Pope there could
be no return to his earlier cultural optimism. In this he is closer to Donne’s
despairing thought that “new philosophy calls all in doubt . . . | . . . ’Tis
all in pieces, all coherence gone” (“An Anatomy of the World” [1611],
205–13).
Pope often reflects Jonsonian ideals, but unlike his predecessor he had
no fondness for works of abstruse learning; indeed, The Dunciad footnotes
sometimes imitate Jonson’s scholarly annotation of his masques, pompous
and chatty by turns, as they explicate the symbolic machinery for us: “The
sable Thrones of Night and Chaos, here represented as advancing to extin-
guish the light of the Sciences . . .” (note to iv, 629). For Pope in the 1740s
the scholarly world has joined the enemy, and night is closing in from every
direction. Book iv of The Dunciad opens with the plea, “Yet, yet a moment,
one dim Ray of Light | Indulge, dread Chaos, and eternal Night!”, and
the uncertain glimmer allows Pope to complete his poem before darkness
swallows all. This would seem to be an allusion to the divine synteresis,
the precarious remnant of God’s divine light within the soul. It is Sir John
Davies’s “dying Sparkle, in this cloudie place” (Nosce Teipsum [1599], 66),
the surviving spark of the divine to which Marston desperately pleads, before
“Oblivion” takes over in the resonant lines of The Scourge of Villanie (1598):
“Return, return, sacred Synderesis! | . . . Awake our lethargy, | Raise us from
our brain-sick foolery!” (viii, 211–14). Pope’s satiric pageant stages itself
as the last Renaissance spectacular, the final big show before the lights are
turned out.
Pope was interested in English literary history, its “schools” and lines of
influence, but he also had a ruthless satiric eye for claims of poetic paternity
and inheritance. While he openly signalled his indebtedness to the classical
tradition and publicised his ancient models, his links to the Elizabethans, if
noted at all, were treated more casually. In a note to Windsor-Forest (65),
Pope acknowledges “an old monkish writer, I forget who”: this is the very
un-monkish Camden. Many scattered allusions have previously been traced,
but the impression remains a fragmentary one, as Earl Wasserman concluded:

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“When a possible influence is discoverable, it appears in a borrowed line,

a snippet of thought, an ingeniously turned figure of speech, a pattern for
organization, but never does it mould the general cast of a poem.”29 But
a more coherent picture is waiting to emerge. Beneath the verbal echoes
of Elizabethan poetry is an identifiable body of Renaissance thought that
helped to shape Pope’s work, and a response to the imaginative and moral
dimensions of these writers that was integral to his poetry.

NOTES
1. Edmund Waller (1606–87), John Dryden (1631–1700), and Joseph Addison
(1672–1719). In this essay the term “Elizabethan” covers those writers active
in the later years of the Queen’s reign, many of whom remained productive
under James and Charles I.
2. Michael Drayton (1563–1631). See Pat Rogers, The Symbolic Design of Windsor-
Forest: Iconography, Pageant, and Prophecy in Pope’s Early Work (Newark:
University of Delaware Press, 2004), pp. 113–37.
3. See Vincent Caretta, “Anne and Elizabeth: The Poet as Historian in Windsor-
Forest,” Studies in English Literature 1500–1900 21 (1981): pp. 425–37 (p. 436).
4. For a concise discussion of Pope’s affinities with Spenser, see Howard Erskine-
Hill’s entry on “Pope” in The Spenser Encyclopedia (London: Routledge, 1990),
pp. 555–6.
5. Pope to Hughes, 7 October 1715 (Corr, i, p. 316). Pope also owned Dryden’s
copy of Spenser’s Works (1611 folio).
6. For a fuller discussion of eighteenth-century responses to The Faerie Queene,
in which imagination and judgment challenged each other, see David Fairer,
“The Faerie Queene and Eighteenth-Century Spenserianism,” in A Companion
to Romance from Classical to Contemporary, ed. Corinne Saunders (Oxford:
Blackwell, 2004), pp. 197–215.
7. See Kathleen Williams, “The Moralized Song: Some Renaissance Themes in
Pope,” ELH 41 (1974): pp. 578–601.
8. In Book iv of The Dunciad Pope draws on the satiric allegory of Walpole as
Archimago in Gilbert West’s A Canto of the Fairy Queen. Written by Spenser
(London, 1739). See Christine Gerrard, The Patriot Opposition to Walpole
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), pp. 177–80.
9. “An Essay on Allegorical Poetry,” in The Works of Mr. Edmund Spenser,
ed. John Hughes, 6 vols. (London: Printed for Jacob Tonson, 1715), i,
p. xxxvi.
10. Benjamin Johnson and Anne Oldfield. See R. G. Noyes, Ben Jonson on the English
Stage, 1660–1776 (New York: Benjamin Blom, 1966), pp. 188–9.
11. Pope, note to Odyssey, xix, 536. Pope’s analysis of musical affect is very close
to that of Thomas Wright, The Passions of the Minde in Generall (London,
1604), p. 168. See David Lindley, Shakespeare and Music (London: Arden, 2006),
pp. 28–30.
12. See David Fairer, Pope’s Imagination (Manchester: Manchester University Press,
1984), pp. 53–81.

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13. See C. H. Carter, “‘Nymphidia,’ ‘The Rape of the Lock,’ and ‘The Culprit Fay,’”
Modern Language Notes 21 (1906): pp. 216–19; John Preston, “‘Th’Informing
Soul’: Creative Irony in The Rape of the Lock,” Durham University Journal
53 (1966): pp. 125–30; Pat Rogers, “Faery Lore and The Rape of the Lock,”
Review of English Studies 25 (1974): pp. 25–38; and Robert McHenry, “Pope
and Spenser,” N&Q 228 (1983): pp. 33–4. Pope himself draws attention to the
Orlando Furioso parallel in a note to v, 114ff.
14. See Arthur W. Hoffman, “Spenser and The Rape of the Lock,” Philological
Quarterly 49 (1970): pp. 530–46.
15. See Michael V. DePorte, Nightmares and Hobbyhorses: Swift, Sterne, and Augus-
tan Ideas of Madness (San Marino: Huntington Library, 1974), pp. 6–12.
16. See Raymond Klibansky, Erwin Panofsky, and Fritz Saxl, Saturn and Melancholy
(London: Nelson, 1964), pp. 68–9; Lawrence Babb, The Elizabethan Malady:
A Study of Melancholia in English Literature from 1580–1642 (East Lansing:
Michigan State College Press, 1951), pp. 2–5; and Baxter Hathaway, The Age of
Criticism: The Late Renaissance in Italy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1962),
p. 34.
17. “Were not my own Carcase (very little suited to my Soul) my worst Enemy, were
it not for the Body of this Death, as St Paul calls it) I would not be seperated
from you” (Pope to Bathurst, 10 May 1736, Corr, iv, p. 15). In February 1728
he told Swift “to expect my soul there with you by that time; but as for the jade
of a body that is tack’d to it, I fear there will be no dragging it after” (Corr, ii,
p. 472).
18. Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus ([?]1592), A-Text, v.ii, 77–86. Though
it is uncertain whether Pope knew Marlowe’s play, but he could have read this
scene in the 1663 edition (“as it is now acted”).
19. The popularity of Drayton’s Englands Heroicall Epistles (1600) in the eighteenth
century is discussed by Earl R. Wasserman, Elizabethan Poetry in the Eighteenth
Century (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1947), pp. 73–4.
20. John Donne, Of the Progress of the Soul. The Second Anniversary (1612), 169–
73. Another phrase in the poem, “Thou shalt not peep through lattices of eyes”
(296), perhaps suggested Pope’s “peep.”
21. Ben Jonson, “An Elegie on the Lady Jane Pawlet,” in The Under-Wood (London,
1640) lxxxiii, 1–3.
22. Writing to the Earl of Orrery, 27 August 1742, Pope speaks of “my frequent
Dreams, & Escapes of Soul toward you” (Corr, iv, p. 413).
23. Stoic “apathy” is neatly summed up by Robert Burton in 1621: “a wise man,
Seneca thinks, is not moved, because he knows there is no remedy for it”
(Anatomy of Melancholy [1621], ii.iii, 7).
24. On the implications of the title, see Howard Erskine-Hill, The Augustan Idea in
English Literature (London: Edward Arnold, 1983), pp. 169–71.
25. On Pope’s “versification” of Donne, see Ian Jack, “Pope and ‘the Weighty Bullion
of Dr. Donne’s Satires,’” PMLA 66 (1951): pp. 1009–22.
26. Jonson, Epigrammes (1616), xv. See Epistle to Arbuthnot, 305–18.
27. The Dunciad burlesques the continuing tradition of spectacular London
pageants, devised by Settle as “city poet,” 1691–1708, and recalling the
iconography of the Elizabethan and Jacobean city pageants. See Fairer, Pope’s
Imagination, pp. 141–3.

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28. Ben Jonson: The Complete Masques, ed. Stephen Orgel (New Haven: Yale Uni-
versity Press, 1969), pp. 127, 132–3. The parallel is discussed by Laura Tosi,
“La Dunciad e il masque elisabettiano: scene di metamorfosi e sovversione
dell’autorità,” Merope xi (2000): pp. 23–45 (p. 28).
29. Wasserman, Elizabethan Poetry in the Eighteenth Century, p. 77.

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 8
PAT R O G E R S

Pope in Arcadia: pastoral

and its dissolution

During much of the nineteenth century, readers viewed Pope as an incorri-

gibly “social” poet, the laureate of tea cups and trivial gossip. For a critic
of the Romantic age, William Lisle Bowles, he ranked no higher than “the
painter of external circumstances in artificial life; as Cowper paints a morn-
ing walk, and Pope a game of cards!”1 Today we see him as one who exposed
the crass commercialism of the age, who anatomized political corruption by
depicting figures of vice like the reptilian Sporus in the Epistle to Arbuthnot,
and who gave us an early vision of a squalid Nighttown in The Dunciad. To
the Victorians, the primarily urban focus of Pope’s later works seemed an
evasion of the poet’s true duty, while to modern readers it appears a badge of
his modernity. What neither position fully allows for is the depth of Pope’s
involvement in the natural world, a direct outcome of his boyhood and youth
spent in the Berkshire countryside.
In this essay I shall try, first, to describe the literary and biographic elements
which helped to form the “pastoral” basis of his early works. Only if we
appreciate what was going on in the years he spent “in Fancy’s Maze” can
we understand the nature of his later achievement once he “stoop’d to Truth,
and moraliz’d his song” (TE, iv, p. 120). The account Pope gave in his Epistle
to Arbuthnot drips with irony:

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.
(147–50; TE, iv, pp. 106–7)

The last line here parodies a verse by Addison, whom Pope attacks later in
the Epistle. But the work in question, published when Pope had reached the
age of sixteen, was one that Pope “used formerly to like . . . extremely” –
many years later, he still regarded it as his favourite among Addison’s poems
(Anecdotes, i, p. 176). Besides, no “painted mistress” makes an appearance in

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the early works. Pope cannot have supposed for a moment that his first poetic
efforts lacked sense, however much description they may include. Moreover,
description remained a serious literary property in forms like pastoral.
In the second part of this essay I shall try to show how Pope’s Arcadian
world collapsed around him in his mid-twenties, as events dictated the move
from his boyhood home. A seismic shift in national politics and the loss of
his elders (his father and his most important mentor, Sir William Trumbull)
occurred soon after he left Binfield for good. In a coda the essay touches
briefly on The Dunciad, as this poem sets out the systematic trashing in later
years of many values that Pope had imbibed in his rural retreat.

Descending gods
The immense impact on Pope’s sensibility of the family home at Binfield
can hardly be overestimated. In the first place, his surroundings near the
village in Windsor Forest, with Easthampstead Park (Trumbull’s home) close
by, supplied him with subject matter, imagery, and a word-hoard with the
names of fields, groves, and streams in the neighbourhood. With very little
exaggeration we could say that the region created as potent an imaginative
matrix for his work as Cumbria did for Wordsworth, Wessex for Hardy, or
Mississippi for Faulkner.
One reason we tend to resist this conclusion lies in the brute facts of
modern geography. Hawkshead, Dorchester, and Oxford, Mississippi remain
quite sequestered, because they are a long way from major centres of popu-
lation. By contrast, Berkshire has become in large measure a bedroom com-
munity for London, with a satellite “new town” at Bracknell (in Pope’s day,
a small village just a couple of miles down the road from his home). Another
“overspill” community for the capital has grown up at Basingstoke, then a
small town in the edge of the forest and fed by the River Loddon, for Pope an
image of pastoral peace – “The Loddon slow, with verdant Alders crown’d”
(TE, i, p. 183). Motorways and railways crisscross the county, and its border
stops only just short of Heathrow airport. The nearest town to Windsor is
Slough, thought unlovely by most, if scarcely deserving of the fate John Bet-
jeman envisaged, “Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough.” Small wonder
that we have trouble imagining the district as a place of mystic forces and
rural bliss, ideal for the reveries of a solitary walker, and instilled with the
memory of ancient pagan spirits haunting the woodland.
In the second place, Pope’s allegiance to his adopted home derives to a
large extent from his pieties as a son. We must think our way back to an
era when young people were invited to write exercises on the theme of what
children owe to their parents – today that formulation looks almost like a

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misprint, with the key nouns accidentally swapped. In later years, too, Pope
showed equal devotion in the care of his aging mother. As for the poet’s
father, Alexander Pope senior had retired from his business in the City of
London, moving out first to Hammersmith, still a rural location, and then
to Binfield in the heart of Windsor Forest. Like his wife, he was getting
on in years, and the young Alexander, with his half-sister already married,
spent his boyhood largely surrounded by much older men and women. The
family had been driven out of central London by the restrictive “ten mile
act” of William and Mary, which created a no-go area for Catholic residents
at the heart of London. Alexander père set up home at Whitehill House in
1700 and began to improve the property, which extended to less than fifteen
acres. Here his son developed his lifelong passion for gardening, exercised
“In Forest planted by a Father’s hand” (Sat, ii.ii, 135). From all this we
can detect a number of attributes characterizing the “paternal cell” which
incubated so much of his early poetry: quiet, (relative) distance from the
city, a kind of happy exile prompted by religious loyalty, beautiful natural
surroundings, space to cultivate one’s garden. It was here that the essential
Pope came into being: here that he forged his literary identity – both as writer
and, logically and temporally prior, as reader.
Late in life, Pope told Joseph Spence that in childhood he had managed to
avoid most of the usual constraints of a formal education. Instead he spent his
time in Binfield in a sort of creative idleness: “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 read, rather than read the books
to get the languages. I followed everywhere as my fancy led me, and was like
a boy gathering flowers in the woods and the fields just as they fall in his
way. I still look upon these five or six years as the happiest part of my life”
(Anecdotes, i, p. 24). Similarly, the hermit philosopher in Windsor-Forest
(235–57) gathers health-giving herbs from the forest and fields. This noble
Cincinnatus may represent Trumbull, or alternatively Pope’s own father, both
of whom could be portrayed as virtuous exiles from a corrupt metropolitan
power-base.
For the poet to turn this corner of the English Home Counties into classic
ground, he obviously needed first a good grounding in the ancient authors.
Unlike Robinson Crusoe, he committed no original sin in devoting himself
to literature: “I left no Calling for this idle trade, | No Duty broke, no Father
dis-obey’d” (Epistle to Arbuthnot, 19–30; TE, iv, p. 105). Indeed his father
had been brought up strictly as a tradesman, although he was the son of an
Anglican clergyman; and doubtless he felt considerable pride in witnessing
the progress his sickly offspring made through self-education. Much of the

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boy’s early enthusiasm went in the direction of epic, especially Homer, but
he read far more widely. From the poetic fabulist Ovid, above all, he would
have imbibed the notion of a Golden Age when men and women lived in
an idyllic state, prior to the fall through silver and bronze to the degenerate
Iron Age of modern times. He probably did not take this schema literally:
the purpose of the trope lay less in berating actuality than in suggesting the
possibility of a primitive ideal to which humanity can aspire during its better
moments.
The most relevant application of this notion emerged in the theory and
practice of pastoral poetry. Quite early in his life Pope would have become
familiar with the ancient pastoral writers. At their head stood the Greek
poet Theocritus, who specialized in contests of skill between two peasants:
he employs a bucolic setting and a language deliberately mimicking rural
dialect, but the verse technique remains highly polished. Later poets such as
Moschus and Bion developed the Greek tradition by importing a strand of
elegy. Their Roman counterpart was Virgil, whose Eclogues dramatized the
complaints of lovers in the imaginary world of Arcadia, a lush and remote
landscape. The form flourished again in the Italian Renaissance with the
work of Torquato Tasso and Giovanni Battista Guarini: meanwhile, poets
such as Spenser, Michael Drayton, Robert Herrick, and Andrew Marvell
extended its compass in English. At the same time a large body of critical
theory grew up around the form, coming to a head close to the time of
Pope’s birth with a dispute that involved the French critics René Rapin and
Bernard de Fontenelle. In his early “Discourse on Pastoral Poetry,” written
about 1706 but unpublished until 1717, Pope tracks a skilful adjudicatory
path between the views of these two men on the way in which modern
authors might recreate the form. For its part, the “Discourse” clearly recog-
nizes the artificiality of pastoral fiction. Thus Pope describes how the genre
originated: “From hence a Poem was invented, and afterwards improv’d to
a perfect image of that happy time; which, by giving us an esteem for the
virtues of a former age, might recommend them to the present.” Then again:
“If we would copy nature, it may be useful to take this idea along with
us, that pastoral is an image of what they call the Golden Age. So that we
are not to describe our shepherds as shepherds at this day really are, but as
they may be conceived then to have been, when the best of men followed
the employment.” At the same time, a hint of rationalization emerges when
Pope comes to modern imitations of the ancient form: “But with respect
to the present age, nothing more conduces to make these composures nat-
ural than when some Knowledge in rural affairs is discover’d” (Prose, i,
pp. 297–9).

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We can gauge the use Pope made of his studies if we turn to “Summer,”
the most accomplished of the four Pastorals he wrote as a teenager. Here it
seems that even Paradise can harbour a snake in the grass:

See what Delights in Sylvan Scenes appear!

Descending Gods have found Elysium here.
In Woods bright Venus with Adonis stray’d,
And chast Diana haunts the Forest Shade.
Come, lovely Nymph, and bless the silent Hours,
When Swains from Sheering seek their nightly Bow’rs;
When weary Reapers quit the sultry Field,
And crown’d with Corn, their Thanks to Ceres yield.
This harmless Grove no lurking Viper hides,
But in my Breast the Serpent Love abides.
Here Bees from Blossoms sip the rosie Dew,
But your Alexis knows no Sweets but you.
Oh deign to visit our forsaken Seats,
The mossie Fountains, and the Green Retreats!
(59–72; TE, i, pp. 76–7)

Yet the pains of love seem finally a small price to pay for the consolations
of these green retreats, and somehow the dream of a magically transformed
future outweighs any sullen realities of the present:

But wou’d you sing, and rival Orpheus’ Strain,

The wondring Forests soon should dance again,
The moving Mountains hear the pow’rful Call,
And headlong Streams hang list’ning in their Fall!
(81–4; TE, i, pp. 78–9)

This is a young man’s vision of an antique fantasy, but one which escapes the
inanities of pure primitivism thanks to the way it is rooted in concrete lan-
guage, if not the Keatsian sensuous mode which readers like Bowles desired:

A Shepherd’s Boy (he seeks no better Name)

Led forth his Flocks along the silver Thame,
Where dancing Sun-beams on the Waters play’d,
And verdant Alders form’d a quivering Shade.
Soft as he mourn’d, the Streams forgot to flow,
The Flocks around a dumb Compassion show:
The Naiads wept in ev’ry Wat’ry Bow’r,
And Jove consented in a silent Show’r.
(1–8; TE, i, pp. 71–2)

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Even the conventional terms of diction like “Bow’r” go beyond the generic,
and they are not vague at all. In the phrasing of the last line, Pope displays
a humour redolent of his master John Dryden, and sly wit close to that of
the Roman poet Ovid, as mighty Jove “consents” to add his own weight of
water in a sudden downpour that falls on the landscape.

Paradise threatened
After the Pastorals (1709) comes the georgic Windsor-Forest, which the poet
once again set in his own home territory. But by now the idyll has started
to come under threat, and a more venomous snake than love is lurking in
the undergrowth. The work opens with a famous evocation of the paradisal
world:

The Groves of Eden, vanish’d now so long,

Live in Description, and look green in Song:
These, were my Breast inspir’d with equal Flame,
Like them in Beauty, should be like in Fame.
Here Hills and Vales, the Woodland and the Plain,
Here Earth and Water seem to strive again;
Not Chaos-like, together crush’d and bruis’d,
But as the World, harmoniously confus’d;
Where Order in Variety we see,
And where, tho’ all things differ, all agree.
Here waving Groves a checquer’d Scene display,
And part admit, and part exclude the Day;
As some coy Nymph her Lover’s warm Address
Nor quite indulges, nor can quite repress.

And, continuing a little further:

There, interspersed in Lawns and opening Glades,

Thin Trees arise that shun each others Shades.
Here in full Light the russet Plains extend;
There wrapt in Clouds the blueish Hills ascend:
Ev’n the wild Heath displays her Purple Dies,
And ’midst the Desart fruitful Fields arise,
That crown’d with tufted Trees and springing Corn,
Like verdant Isles the sable Waste adorn.
(7–28; TE, i, pp. 148–50)

This is writing of extraordinary delicacy, with the stereotyped diction made,

against its instincts, to express precise topographic details. But it takes a
little more effort than before to transform the forest into Eden. Here the

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woodland lies in peril of violation, dramatized in the inset story of the nymph
Lodona, a mythical personification of the river that ran close to Pope’s home
in Berkshire. After she has suffered pursuit and the threat of rape by the
brutal satyr Pan, she returns to her original element:

“Let me, O let me, to the Shades repair,

“My native Shades, – there weep, and murmur there,”
She said, and melting as in Tears she lay,
In a soft, silver Stream dissolv’d away.
(201–04; TE, i, p. 168)

So pastoral itself begins to dissolve as the harsher realities of the modern

world encroach ever nearer to the heart of the forest. A sense of lost innocence
had imbued the form ever since its origins in ancient Greece; but loss in
Windsor-Forest is felt more urgently and more pervasively.
Elsewhere in the poem, the Arcadian theme surfaces again:

Let old Arcadia boast her ample Plain,

The immortal Huntress, and her Virgin Train;
Nor envy, Windsor! since thy Shades have seen
As bright a Goddess, and as chast a Queen;
Whose Care, like hers, protects the Sylvan Reign,
The Earth’s fair Light, and Empress of the Main.
Here too, ’tis sung, of old Diana stray’d,
And Cynthus’ Top forsook for Windsor Shade;
Here was she seen o’er Airy Wastes to rove,
Seek the clear Spring, or haunt the pathless Grove;
Here arm’d with silver Bows, in early Dawn,
Her buskin’d Virgins trac’d the Dewy Lawn.
(159–70; TE, i, pp. 164–5)

In the Pastorals we had the fiction, playfully indulged, of gods descending to

earth. This time the apposition of the Arcadian huntress, Diana, and the real
monarch, Anne, clearly suggests that the queen was an avatar of the goddess
of the hunt. It involves a more daring strategy, and of course a more risky
one, because it implies a particular identification rather than a mere generic
similarity. What would happen if the queen no longer ruled over the forest
or held empire over the war-torn “Main”? And supposing “Peace and Plenty
tell, a Stuart reigns” (42), what might come about, should the emperor in
waiting prove not to be a Stuart at all – rather, an imported Hanoverian
who, by Jacobite calculations, ranked no higher than fifty-fifth in his claim
to the throne?2
Such questions would have occurred to any thoughtful reader when
Windsor-Forest made its appearance in 1713. And Pope had certainly

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considered them, as the entire poem demonstrates. For reasons both per-
sonal and political, the potential – soon to be actual – death of the queen
brought issues of the royal succession home to Windsor, and hence to the
whole idea of pastoral.

Et ille in Arcadia
The tag “Et ego in Arcadia (fui or vixi),” I too have known Arcadia, has
acquired its most resonant embodiment in the picture by Nicolas Poussin
(c.1638). Shepherds in Tempe, the sacred vale of Thessaly, unexpectedly dis-
cover an ancestral monument with the gnomic inscription. Most students of
art history interpret the phrase to mean, “even in Arcadia, bad things may
happen”; but in the light of a seminal article by Erwin Panofsky, the drift of
the iconography Poussin employed has been read as Death speaking: “I too
am found in Arcadia.”3 Windsor-Forest enacts the same message, with the
violence dramatized in the fate of Lodona.
In 1713 Pope found himself witnessing the break-up of the Tory admin-
istration led by his friends Oxford and Bolingbroke. As the long-drawn out
war finally came to an end, instead of peace and plenty came the dissolution
of the government amid growing fractiousness. Oxford was dismissed by the
queen just days before her own death on 1 August 1714. With the accession
of the new king, George I, everything changed for the Catholic population.
New laws soon required them to take an oath of loyalty – Pope apparently
refused to do this. After this they had to register their real estate and its
value. A hard choice lay before the Popes: either to sell out while they could,
or else hang on with the prospect of crippling double taxes. The family took
the first course, and prepared to abandon their treasured home in early 1716
for a new base outside London at Chiswick. During this period the poet’s
letters constantly refer to the impending events. He tells his co-religionist
John Caryll in March, “I write this from Windsor Forest, which I am come
to take my last look and leave of. We here bid our papist-neighbours adieu”
(Corr, i, p. 336).
What made it even worse was that Pope’s closest women friends, Teresa
and Martha Blount, also had to take their leave from the environs of the
forest. Their brother’s marriage obliged them to leave their home at Maple-
durham, an Elizabethan mansion which lay hidden among trees on the river-
side. Now they faced a new life in London. Pope’s imagination had turned the
young women into something like woodland nymphs. For the purposes of
their own make-believe world of private correspondence, they had adopted
fanciful names, appropriate to romance and pastoral, such as Zephalinda
and Parthenissa; and Pope had even used these forms in his exquisite

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“Epistle to Miss Blount, on her leaving the Town, after the Coronation,”
dating probably from late 1714 (TE, vi, pp. 124–6). In real life the sisters
were driven in the opposite direction from the heroine of this poem, and
compelled to give up the country pleasures they (Martha especially) had
enjoyed. Pope’s friend John Gay went down to Berkshire at this time, and
reported, “Binfield alas is sold, The Trees of Windsor-Forest shall no more
listen to the tunefull reed of the swain, & no more Beeches shall be wounded
with the names of Teresa & Patty. Teresa & Patty are forced to leave the
Groves of Mapledurham . . . as Binfield is for ever sold.”4
As Pope explained to Caryll, a relative of the Blount sisters and godfather
of Martha, it had all been a traumatic experience: “Tho’ the change of my
scene of life, from Windsor Forest to the water-side at Chiswick, be one of the
grand ra’s of my days, and may be called a notable period in so inconsiderable
a history” (Corr, i, p. 343). To the squire of Binfield, he was more explicit:

I have not dined at home these 15 days, and perfectly regrett the quiet, indo-
lence, silence, and sauntring, that made up my whole life in Windsor Forest. I
shall therefore infallibly be better company and better pleased than ever you
knew me, as soon as I can get under the shade of Priest-Wood, whose trees I
have yet some Concern about. I hope, whatever license the freeborn Subjects of
your Commons may take, there will yet be Groves enough left in those Forests
to keep a Pastoral-writer in countenance. Whatever belongs to the Crown is
indeed as much trespas’d upon at this time in the Court as in the Country.
While you are lopping his timber, we are lopping his Prerogative.
(Corr, i, p. 352)

Despite the joking tone, we should have no doubt of the serious issues at
stake. “Quiet, indolence, silence, and sauntering” look like trivial or even
culpable ways of passing the time. Pope means the otium of classical poets,
such as Horace, Martial, and Ovid, a desirable space for reflection, not
so much leisure as an inner peace or spiritual tranquillity. A year later, Pope
enclosed in a letter to the Blount sisters a “Hymn Written in Windsor Forest”:

All hail! once pleasing, once inspiring Shade,

Scene of my youthful Loves, and happier hours!
Where the kind Muses met me as I stray’d,
And gently pressd my hand, and said, Be Ours! –
Take all thou e’re shalt have, a constant Muse:
At Court thou may’st be lik’d, but nothing gain;
Stocks thou may’st buy & sell, but always lose;
And love the brightest eyes, but love in vain!
(TE, vi, p. 194)

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Here Pope movingly reanimates a stock antithesis between court and country
by infusing a keen personal sense of loss, drawing on the poet’s formative
years with his friends in the forest.
As a Protestant, Sir William Trumbull had no need to desert his estate at
Easthampstead. But even he, Pope believed, may have felt the urge to hunker
down when the Jacobite rebellion and political riots overtook the nation in
1715: “I cannot but applaud your resolution of continuing in what you call
your Cave in the forest, this winter; and preferring the noise of breaking Ice
to that of breaking Statesmen, the rage of Storms to that of Parties, and fury
and ravage of Floods and Tempests, to the precipitancy of some, and the
ruin of others, which I fear will be our daily prospect in London” (Corr, i,
p. 324). A few months later the old man died, commemorated in an epitaph of
studied moderation by his disciple. In Pope’s eyes, Trumbull had seemed like
“a venerable prophet, foretelling with lifted hands the miseries to come upon
posterity, which he was just going to be removed from!” (Corr, i, p. 337).
He acts here like the prophetic figure of Father Thames in Windsor-Forest,
foretelling the future course of civilization – a river god drawn straight from
the staffage of pastoral painting and poetry.
On 23 October 1717 Alexander Pope senior followed Trumbull to the
grave. Now Pope had lost most of the tutelary figures who had inspired
him in his youth: his immediate family consisted only of his aging mother
and a half-sister with whom he had a slightly patchy relationship. Soon he
would move to Twickenham, in an effort perhaps to recapture some of the
boons of “retirement” which had come to him so easily in the forest, before
events in the larger world had begun to impinge on life there. Some famous
lines, quoted elsewhere in this volume (see p. 130), lamented the savage laws
against Catholics, originally imposed by William III and then renewed by
George I: “But knottier Points we knew not half so well, | Depriv’d us soon of
our Paternal Cell.” The effects went beyond political identity and civic rights,
though they included these: “And certain Laws, by Suff’rers thought unjust,
| Deny’d all Posts of Profit or of Trust” (Ep, ii.ii, 58–61; TE, iv, p. 169). The
new controls affected Pope’s sense of his own vocation, realigning both the
subjects he could write about and the way in which he would approach his
material. Many factors went into the decision to “moralize his song.” But
at one level the swerve proceeded from a deep internal need, which might
be called existential in character. It is not just that Pope outgrew childish
fantasy as he matured. Rather, pastoral had become unavailable because his
mind had always bound up its fundamental assumptions with the idealized
world of the Stuart regime. As his imagination constructed events, the death
of the queen meant that nature would droop, and the forest would fall prey

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to aggressive invaders – like Nimrod, William the Conqueror and, implicitly,

William III in the plot of Windsor-Forest.
Behind the symbolic tale of Lodona in that poem lies an Ovidian myth
related in Metamorphoses, Book viii. Despite warnings from a wood nymph,
a prince in Thessaly named Erysichthon violated a grove sacred to Deme-
ter (in Roman mythology, Ceres), by cutting down an oak, possessing a
“strength matured with centuries of growth.” The dryads complained to
Ceres, and at her command he was punished by Famine, who came from
barren Scythia, a land without trees, to inflict on him an insatiable hunger.
This episode haunts the text of Pope’s poem: in a crucial passage he refers
to the “Fact accurst” (321) of the execution of Charles I, the darkest deed
of modern times according to Stuart myth. He probably recalled Ovid’s
description of Erysichthon, who took his axe and cleaved the trunk with
his “impious stroke” in an act of sacrilege, as the blood pours forth from
the “smitten neck” (Metamorphoses, viii, 761–4). Again, Ceres signifies her
assent to the dryads with a nod of her head that shakes the fields of ripening
grain. Similarly in Windsor-Forest the Stuarts rescue the woodland from its
earlier depredation and barrenness: “Here Ceres’ Gifts in waving prospect
stand, | And nodding tempt the joyful Reaper’s Hand” (39–40; TE, i, p. 152).
In Pope’s application of the myth, a pastoral conceit tells us of the death of
the pastoral vision.

The Dunciad
In many ways Pope designed The Dunciad as an anti-Arcadian poem. Of
course, it draws on many models: one of these, relevant to its negative use
of classical forms, is the urban pastoral or town eclogue, pioneered by Swift
in works such as his “Description of a City Shower” (1709) and further
developed by Gay in his urban georgic, Trivia (1716). Here Swift parodies
the ancient descriptio, a point-by-point representation of a scene, set out in
almost diagrammatic form. But, as Claude Rawson has shown, these trans-
muted versions have the effect less of deflating the original than of “leveling”
it out.5 Meanwhile Gay domesticizes and, literally, trivializes georgic as he
applies it to the street life of modern London: but the device does not have a
critical function, and indeed the poem seems to celebrate the squalor of the
city more than to deplore it. By contrast, when Pope sets the conventions and
style of classical forms up against the harsh reality of modern life, this has
the effect of removing any aspirations to greatness which the capital might
harbor. If mock-epic shows the contemporary world to be less than heroic
than its predecessors, then mock-pastoral shows its noise and ugliness to

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be the emblem of its decadence. A failure in aesthetics becomes a failure in

compassing the nature of civilized living.
The way in which The Dunciad subverts pastoral expectation shows up
most clearly in Books ii and iii. However, reminiscences of Virgil’s Eclogues
permeate the entire text: at least sixteen, according to Pope’s notes, with all
but three of them occurring within the inner books. When the poem alludes
to the branch of Styx into which Smedley dives, the echoes come thick and
fast:

First he relates, how sinking to the chin,

Smit with his mien, the Mud-nymphs suck’d him in:
How young Lutetia, softer than the down,
Nigrina black, and Merdamante brown,
Vy’d for his love in jetty bow’rs below;
As Hylas fair was ravish’d long ago.

The setting lies near the Fleet Ditch, a malodorous channel silted up with
rubbish, fed by half the sewers of London. Hints of a far-off classical world
turn the ditch into a perverse recycling of the waters celebrated in myth:

Then sung, how shown him by the nut-brown maids,

A branch of Styx here rises from the Shades,
That tinctur’d as it runs with Lethe’s streams,
And wafting vapours from the Land of Dreams,
(As under seas Alphæus’ secret sluice
Bears Pisa’s offerings to his Arethuse)
Pours into Thames: Each city-bowl is full
Of the mixt wave, and all who drink grow dull.
How to the banks where bards departed doze,
They led him soft; how all the bards arose,
Taylor, sweet Swan of Thames, majestic bows,
And Shadwell nods the poppy on his brows;
While Milbourn there, deputed by the rest,
Gave him the cassock, surcingle, and vest;
And “Take (he said) these robes which once were mine,
“Dulness is sacred in a sound Divine.”
(ii, 307–27: TE, v, pp. 139–41)

We see immediately how the nymphs, with their incongruously euphonious

names, have escaped from stock pastoral contexts. The lines about the Arca-
dian river Alpheus and the spring Arethusa go back directly to the opening of
Virgil’s tenth Eclogue. But most of the passage replays a section of the sixth
poem in the series, which tells the story of Hylas, a beautiful boy carried
off by Hercules on the Argonaut expedition. At a stopping point the water

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nymphs in attendance at the fountain glimpse Hylas, and fall in love with
him. Subsequently they draw him to his death in the spring. The later part of
the excerpt closely parodies other verses from the same Eclogue, describing
Linus, a shepherd-poet who taught Orpheus in the skills of music. Pope adds
to the absurdity by applying the Spenserian title “sweet bird of Thames” to
John Taylor, a journeyman author and Thames boatman from the early sev-
enteenth century, whose ragged verses would inspire no great musician to
set their halting rhythms.
Another debasing reference occurs when the poem introduces “two slip-
shod Muses,” a cutting reference to Eliza Haywood and Susanna Centlivre.
Haywood was a prolific writer and journalist specializing in novels of erotic
adventure, while Centlivre wrote some of the most popular stage comedies
of the age. The two women authors “traipse” along, “With tresses staring
from poetic dreams, | And never wash’d, but in Castalia’s streams” (iii, 143–
4; TE, v, p. 162). To bathe in Castalia’s stream meant to enter a spring on
Mount Parnassus, named after a nymph whom Apollo had pursued, and
hence to imbibe poetic inspiration. Once more the allusion has the effect of
bringing the sacred places of pastoral art into raw conjunction with decadent
modern writing reliant, the poem suggests, on mere afflatus.
The Dunciad, we could surmise, testifies to the enduring hold which the
lost paradise of Pope’s early enthusiasms maintained over his imagination.
Something of the pastoral dream lives on as a normative force in the poem,
long after its potency had been shrunk by the hard knocks of public and
private experience.

NOTES
1. William Lisle Bowles, The Invariable Principles of Poetry (1819).
2. Actually, when Pope wrote, the claimant was George’s mother, the Electress
Sophia, so that there would have been a new “Empress” to oversee the nation.
She died a few weeks before Anne, in June 1714.
3. See Erwin Panofsky, “Et in Arcadia Ego: Poussin and the Elegiac Tradition,” in
Meaning in the Visual Arts (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955), pp. 295–
320.
4. The Letters of John Gay, ed. C. F. Burgess (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), p. 29.
5. C. J. Rawson, “The Nightmares of Strephon: Nymphs of the City in the Poems
of Swift, Baudelaire, Eliot,” in English Literature in the Age of Disguise, ed.
Maximillian E. Novak (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), p. 59.

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 9
BRIAN YOUNG

Pope and ideology

What is now published, is only to be considered as a general Map of M a n ,

marking out no more than the greater parts, their extent, their limits, and their
connections, but leaving the particular to be more fully delineated in the charts
which are to follow.
(An Essay on Man, “The Design” [TE, iii.i, p. 8])

This essay will unpack the simple statements that Alexander Pope was born
to Catholic parents in 1688, and that he died in 1744, still a Catholic. His co-
religionists constituted a small percentage of the national population. They
formed a conspicuous block of society in only a few parts of the country,
notably Lancashire and Cheshire, although there was an important group
of recusant gentry in the Thames Valley, with whom Pope made lasting con-
nections during his youth. Some humbler folk in the provinces retained an
allegiance to the old faith, but as yet there had been no large-scale immi-
gration from Catholic countries to major centers, so that the urban poor
were Protestant for the most part. Within months of Pope’s birth, James II
was ousted from the throne, having lost popularity in considerable measure
because of his attempts to impose freedom of worship, that is official toler-
ance of Catholicism. The backlash which followed under William and Mary
saw the introduction of severe penal laws against the papist community.
Excluded from succession to the throne, Catholics had to take oaths of loy-
alty, on pain of losing most civic rights. At the same time they were precluded
from living within ten miles of the center of London, and from becoming
members of the legal profession. Out of fear that insurrection would break
out, they were likewise forbidden to keep arms, ammunition or, bizarrely,
a horse worth more than ten pounds. A particularly fierce law passed in
1700 incapacitated all Roman Catholics from inheriting or purchasing land,
unless they formally abjured their religion. If they refused, their property
was legally transferred for life to their next of kin in the Protestant faith.
They were even prohibited from sending their children abroad, to be edu-
cated in their own faith. Finally, the measure laid down that any Catholic
priests caught exercizing their vocation should be imprisoned for life, and it
set a reward of one hundred pounds for informing against priests who said
mass.

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These draconian powers had a direct and personal impact on the Pope
family. It was because of these laws that the poet’s father left London shortly
after the Revolution of 1688; and even their ultimate refuge involved a legal
fiction, since they were not permitted to buy their house in the country. As
time went on, the operation of the laws was relaxed under Queen Anne, and
several of Pope’s friends and neighbours continued to send their children,
both boys and girls, to Continental Europe for a Catholic education. But
the Hanoverian accession in 1714 led to a renewal of the old laws and the
introduction of even more stringent measures.
The name of Pope joined with the word “ideology” might seem to be an
anachronistic conjunction, but the opening sentence of this essay implies the
deeply ideological parameters in which Pope lived both his diurnal and his
imaginative life. In this essay I shall seek to demonstrate that few words
so accurately describe Pope’s political and religious positions as the word
“ideology” in its original sense. The term is a direct product of the French
Revolution. It was coined by revolutionary secularists to denote systems of
belief, emphasizing in particular the supremacy of a sense-based science of
man over those false systems of metaphysical belief which it decried as having
been promulgated by priests to their own power-hungry ends. By demysti-
fying the understanding of humankind and its life in society, promoters of
the concept of an ideology aimed to free modern politics from its previ-
ous domination by religion and its handmaid, monarchy. The unmasking of
religion as an institutionalized ideology drove humankind’s social relations
away from notions of the divine and the imperatives of Christian belief,
clinically exposing it as a socially and politically-driven system of ideas. In
its original sense, an ideology is the result of this distilling of the allegedly
sacred into its purely social and political components.1 In the eighteenth cen-
tury, the politics of religion could quickly turn into the religion of politics, as
was most apparent in the desacralization of monarchy in the period of the
French Revolution. Most tellingly for our understanding of Pope’s intellec-
tual character, this development had been foreshadowed in England when
a limited parliamentary Hanoverian monarchy had pulled the teeth from
Stuart attempts at developing politically efficacious notions of divine right
monarchy. The collapse of Jacobitism as a serious political challenge to the
limited monarchy of Hanoverian England, a process enacted in the course
of Pope’s lifetime, was analogous to what would follow in the France of the
late 1780s and early 1790s, during which time the concept of ideology was
developed as the sacred space of monarchy gave way to the secular public
space of republicanism.
Here I shall focus on the cultural politics of Pope’s writings, to indicate
how central his problematic relationship with religion is in understanding

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the ideology at work here. Pope was born a Catholic, but was strongly influ-
enced by his friend Henry St John, Viscount Bolingbroke, whose posthu-
mously published writings reveal him to have been a freethinking deist. Bol-
ingbroke’s critical perspectives on the nature and purpose of religion had
a profound impact on Pope’s thinking, and this led in turn to a good deal
of philosophical reflection on natural religion in his poetry; his Catholicism
gradually shaded into an almost classical freedom of thought on religious
matters. Pope had originally known and admired Bolingbroke from the lat-
ter’s years as a Tory minister, and he remained loyal to him when Boling-
broke was forced into exile by the new Whig regime as a result of his contacts
with the exiled Stuart dynasty. On his subsequent return to England, Boling-
broke set up as a leading light of the “Patriot” opposition to Walpole, and
Pope remained loyal to his idol’s cause. Deism and “Patriotism” succeeded
Catholicism and Jacobitism in guaranteeing opposition status to Pope and
his writings, a position from which he was briefly saved towards the very
end of his life through his subsequent association with William Warburton,
a Whig cleric who subsequently shaped Pope’s posthumous reputation. I
shall explore these ideological dimensions in Pope’s experience as they were
reflected in his writings. Jacobitism and deism were dangerous elements in
any man’s thinking, and Pope shadowed his thinking with a free play of satire
as a means of sanitizing such potentially compromising reflections. As will
become apparent as we proceed, shadowing and doubling were to become
important elements in Pope’s writing.
The crucial issue here is what Pope’s writings meant in the age in which they
were written.2 This requires a historicized reading of literary texts, in this
instance chiefly An Essay on Man and The Dunciad, rather than a politicized
reading of that history and those texts. Thus my purpose here differs from
some approaches to Pope.3 The primary elements in any reading of Pope
and “ideology” are constituted by politics and religion, but more specifi-
cally by the peculiar relationship between the two that held sway in early-
and mid-eighteenth century England. In politics this is particularly marked
for Pope by the politics of opposition, whether voiced through the language
of “Patriotism” or the counter-ideology of Jacobitism; in religion, the com-
peting claims of Catholicism and deism can be seen as providing directly
analogous theaters of ideas for Pope, appeal to either of which – let alone
both – likewise involved a form of intellectual opposition to the then pre-
vailing orthodoxies. As Laura Brown rightly observes regarding his unique
place in a world of Whig panegyric, there was always an “implicit ambiva-
lence in Pope’s imperialist poems.”4 Indeed, there is an implicit ambivalence
in much that Pope has to say about a broad range of political and religious
issues.

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Outsiders and opposition

Pope was very profoundly a poet of opposition, and the depths of that oppo-
sition are only gradually becoming apparent. Far from being the laureate of
Augustan England, Pope was a firm witness to the perceived shortcomings
of the Whig alliance between Church and State. As a professed Catholic and
at least an emotional Jacobite (to use Douglas Brooks-Davies’s felicitous
phrase),5 Pope was very much an outsider in Whig-Anglican - still more so
in Whig-Dissenting – England. Had his health allowed him to travel, Pope
might have found himself more at home in the sometimes religiously skepti-
cal, if professedly Catholic, Jacobite circles exiled in France and Rome. His
outsider status in England necessarily made him something of an intellectual
cosmopolitan, even if his satirical barbs might now occasionally look some-
what provincial, but it was often precisely what he correctly identified as the
provincialism of his targets that he was especially keen to penetrate through
satire.
Satire can, of course, often be a means of putting critics off the scent of
one’s own values. Two lines of The Dunciad (ii, 367–8) can be read in exactly
this way:

Toland and Tindal, prompt at Priests to jeer,

Yet silent bow’d to Christ’s No kingdom here.
(TE, v, pp. 144–5)

These lines berate two of the most prominent deists of the early 1700s, and
do so by associating them with the Low Church bishop, Benjamin Hoadly
(although Warburton sought to limit the collateral damage done to an Angli-
can dignitary in his exculpatory footnote). Why did Pope do this (remem-
bering that at least one critic has found an echo of Toland in two lines in An
Essay on Man)?6 Catholic deism had made Pope extraneous to the estab-
lished rhythm of the government of his age in a manner directly contrary
to the notoriety experienced by his older contemporary, Matthew Tindal
(1657–1733). This is a useful perspective in understanding Pope, since Tin-
dal’s religious journey was directly comparable with his own; Tindal’s career
also firmly embodies precisely those elements which the word “ideology”
was designed to explain and, indeed, expose. The son of a clergyman, Tin-
dal became a Roman Catholic during the reign of James II, adjudging this an
astute thing to do (as, had things turned out differently, it might well have
been). He worked for James’s interest during the Monmouth Rebellion, but
seems to have been talked out of Catholicism in conversations in London
coffee houses, quickly becoming an enthusiastic proponent of the “Glorious
Revolution” instead. In the wake of Williamite success, he reverted to the

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Church of England, but quickly turned anti-clerical, and his freethinking –

and bad morals – ultimately gained him the disapprobation of the Oxford
Jacobite Thomas Hearne, who called Tindal a “Libertine,” “that notorious
Atheist,” “that Rascal,” denouncing him as a promoter of “vile, republi-
can Rascals.” In a poem entitled The Apparition (1710), Abel Evans, an
Oxford ally of Pope, similarly decried Tindal, describing him as a danger-
ously immoral force:

In vice and Error from his Cradle Nurs’d:

He studies hard, and takes extreme Delight,
In Whores, or Heresies to spend the Night.7

Tindal would consummate his freethinking by producing a dialog, Chris-

tianity as Old as the Creation (1731), in which he emptied out the dogmas
of revealed religion into the territory of natural religion, a religion of reason
which predated later, priest-driven, factional, warring religions. This tract
gained him yet more notoriety, and legions of clerics assembled to denounce
it in print.
Tindal’s journey from Catholicism to deism can be read alongside Pope’s
altogether more circumspect equivalent of that journey, and Tindal’s public
reception demonstrates yet again why Pope may have wished to remain
under the oddly protective cloak of his parents’ religion, especially as he had
moved into the ambit of the freethinking Bolingbroke precisely when Tindal
was producing his anti-clerical writings. By denouncing revealed religion as
the tool of priestcraft, Tindal the ex-Catholic convert was preparing the way
for ideology as a secular critique of religion. Pope’s journey from faith into
poetic explorations of freethinking philosophy can be read in a similar way,
but An Essay on Man was in an entirely different category from Tindal’s
exercises in haute vulgarisation, and Tindal’s blunt and vulgar Whiggism
was completely unlike Pope’s principled politics of cultural opposition.
Pope, a cradle Catholic in a political culture predicated on anti-
Catholicism, necessarily enjoyed an anomalous experience of religion and
politics in early- and mid-eighteenth century England. It was this perspective
that enabled him to distance himself from much of the religious debate that
engulfed a lifetime deeply marked and shadowed by the politics of religion,
both at its beginning (he was born in the year of the Glorious Revolution),
and at its close (he died one year before the final abortive Jacobite rising of
1745). As noted earlier, the year of Pope’s birth also witnessed James II’s ill-
starred attempts to re-Catholicize his kingdoms which were quickly to end in
ignominious failure, and England and Ireland were instead to be immediately
subjected to a Dutch invasion in which their former isolationism was aban-
doned in favour of commitment to more than a century of Franco-British

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warfare. Likewise, Pope died immediately prior to the savage suppression

of Jacobitism in the wake of the 1745 rebellion, when “Butcher” Cumber-
land put down the forces of Charles Edward Stuart at Culloden in a way his
subsequent nickname sufficiently conveys to posterity. The Whiggish history
that grew up around these events would have provokingly challenged Pope’s
directly contrary experience of his times. Distanced as he was from the estab-
lished faith, he experienced its part in the politics of England in much the
way that French revolutionaries had observed the Catholicism into which
he had been born. Just as with religion, so with political life generally: Pope
the Catholic outsider forever shadowed Pope the “Tory” insider.
There is a politics of internal exile in Pope’s poetry, nowhere more apparent
than in poetry about actual exile, as is vividly apparent in one of the most
affecting of his poems, the epitaph for the Jacobite Francis Atterbury. Pope
removed the epitaph at the last minute from publication in 1735; the lines
would remain unpublished until 1751. There is something particularly telling
in a poem written by an English Catholic deist to commemorate an English
clergyman, a former dean of Christ Church, Oxford and bishop of Rochester,
who had died in political exile in France.8 The poem ends in an appeal to
religiously-inflected patriotism voiced by Atterbury himself:

O more than Fortune, Friends, or Country lost!

Is there on earth one Care, one Wish beside?
Yes – Save my Country, Heav’n,
– He said, and dy’d.
(TE, vi, p. 344).

The England in which Atterbury had believed was decidedly not the England
of the Hanoverian settlement. Pope, who was similarly disinclined to accept
the rule of Walpole and his allies, was thus united with men of directly con-
trary religious persuasions in an emotional commitment to Jacobitism.9 The
politics of opposition often unite strange bedfellows, and this was especially
true of the cultural politics of the English opposition in the first half of the
eighteenth century. Jacobitism was more than mere political factionalism,
and its meaning is best appreciated when it is considered as an ideology.
Jacobitism led to internal as well as external exile, and the doubling nature
of inner and outer exile accurately reflected the always shadowy character
of political opposition.

Warburton and Bolingbroke

Doubling was a necessary fact of both Pope’s public and his private life;
indeed, the fact that it is not always easy to distinguish the two is further

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testimony to the centrality of doubling in his experience. His forays into the
world of ideology were likewise usually undertaken in the potent company of
a guide completely at home in the established culture of an England in which
Pope was a born stranger, albeit a licensed one. In politics, he observed the
public world alongside the religiously suspect Viscount Bolingbroke; in reli-
gion, he sought respectability alongside the more outlandishly circumspect
William Warburton. That Warburton was a staunch critic of Bolingbroke,
and that in secret Pope was a steady critic of Warburton, further demon-
strates how this process of doubling and shadowing always informed the
poet’s life, career, and, in no insignificant way, his writings. Pope’s negotia-
tion of this complex texture of associations reveals him as a born survivor, a
supreme player of the ideological games that underpinned the political and
religious life of England between the accession of Mary II and William III
and the final Jacobite rout of 1745. Why Pope, whose religious character
remains obscure, chose to remain a Roman Catholic when conversion to
Anglicanism would have procured him an altogether easier and more com-
fortable political identity, is a genuine enigma. To seek to explain this on the
grounds of pietas (namely that he did not wish to offend the religious sensi-
bilities of his parents), is surely inadequate as an explanation in a career that
was not above exploiting circumstance. In attempting to resolve the enigma,
however, it has to be admitted that continuing to be a Catholic enabled Pope
to play a unique role as a protected outsider looking in at a religious and
political world direct entry to which was otherwise denied him.
Pope’s use of satire in disguising his own commitments, a technique not
unknown to Erasmians and freethinkers, makes it occasionally difficult to
disentangle the religious elements of his thinking.10 Despite the apparent
transparency of his writings, there is often an oblique quality to his work,
particularly when it alludes to ideology (itself a shadowy concept since it
always wants to be seen as the natural state of affairs). Pope was espe-
cially shadowy when it came to discussion of religion, and it is plainly the
case that he was greatly relieved when Warburton came along to provide
his poetry with a respectable Anglican veneer, which would culminate in
the notes he supplied to a posthumous edition of the poems in 1751. Pope
was dependent on Bolingbroke early on in helping to shape his mind, and
later he grew dependent on Warburton for apparently clarifying it before a
potentially suspicious public. Shadowing and doubling played a part in these
friendships.
The attempt to understand Pope’s politics by referring to those of his
mentor and protector Bolingbroke is a complicated enterprise in that the
latter’s own politics have elicited different interpretations. One view is that
Bolingbroke’s famous tract The Idea of a Patriot King appeals to a politics

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of nostalgia, deploying the age of Elizabeth as a golden age to which Eng-

land might return if only the right politics, those of patriotism, are engaged
actively by its monarch and his people. (It is worth reflecting, in the light
of this, on Pope’s own use of golden age motifs in his poetry). The second
approach is to read Bolingbroke as an adept at the politics of opposition,
who draws on the politics of patriotism to secure support for his own par-
ticipation in a supposedly popular programme in politics that would guaran-
tee him an entrepreneurial role in a newly virtuous kingdom. We also appre-
ciate how the literary culture of opposition to Walpole flourished within the
patriotic rhetoric of disinterested virtue, and also how it subsequently came
apart when the necessarily compromising practice of politics claimed some of
its former adherents. This Bolingbrokean-inflected patriotism would allow
Pope to glory in the double-edged interpretation of Augustanism, namely
that one could celebrate its achievements whilst denigrating its corruptions.
Again, the language of patriotism allows for a doubling of precisely the kind
that Pope relished, as he could both lambast the corruptions of his contempo-
raries and appeal to a patriotic counter to it. Ambivalence is the key to such an
enterprise. Finally, we have learnt to trace the contours of Pope’s complicated
political filiations with Bolingbroke’s philosophy of virtuous patriotism, and
to identify the congruence between the apparent deism of An Essay on Man
and the freethinking materialism later uncovered when Bolingbroke’s philo-
sophical writings were published after the deaths of both men.11 Pope had to
manage a balancing act between Erasmian Catholicism and deism, the more
difficult because deism was particularly critical of Catholicism.
Deism presented itself as a religion of gentlemen, boosted in this self-
confidence by the polite philosophy adumbrated by Lord Shaftesbury in his
Characteristicks (1714), an influential series of reflections and dialogs on
morality and esthetics. For its Christian opponents, such as William Law,
whose mysticism was later to lead to accusations of enthusiasm being lev-
eled against him, deism was too gentlemanly, lacking the commitment to
charity necessary in any form of proper Christian commitment. The battle
for the hearts and minds of the aristocracy and the gentry dominated much
anti-deist writing in the first half of the eighteenth century, and John Wesley
would take the battle into the realms of the poor and the unchurched. As is
the case with many belief systems, deism has often been defined by its ene-
mies, and a sometimes specious coherence has resulted. The many varieties
of deism and freethinking have finally, however, begun to be examined in
all their distinctiveness by historians of religion and philosophy, but it still
remains possible to offer a plausible root meaning of deism: a belief in the
congruity between nature appreciated as the work of a beneficent creator
with a universal morality, again construed as evidence of divine beneficence

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in a supremely moral universe. Constructive deism instanced the fitness of the

world of things, especially of nature, and also of moral agreement between
human beings, as twin evidences of the existence of the God of nature.
Something of its naturalistic thinking is evident in Pope’s “The Universal
Prayer,” with its suitable dedication: “Deo Opt. Max” (a form of bene-
diction to God often used in memorial inscriptions). Even this dedicatory
abbreviation is eloquent, instancing Pope’s perceived unwillingness to spell
out the nature of God directly, taking refuge instead in Latinate cultural prac-
tices that can be interpreted as an appeal both to the authority of classical
Roman religion and to the necessarily private language of English Roman
Catholicism. Shadowing and doubling are again apparent in his work in this
dedication. Two of the poem’s stanzas are closer to the classical world of
universal religion than they are to the claims for universality made by the
Roman Catholic Church. Stanza 9, at lines 33–6, evokes exactly the natu-
ral and moralistic apologetic common amongst deists both at the time the
poem was first written, between 1703 and 1715, and when it was published,
in 1738 (near the close of a religiously significant decade, as this was the
most strongly anti-clerical period of the entire eighteenth century, during
which Walpole’s parliament was seeking to undo many of the privileges of
the Church of England).12

Save me alike from foolish Pride,

Or impious Discontent,
At ought thy Wisdom has deny’d,
Or ought thy Goodness lent.

It was the duty of man to accept his fallibility when judging the world of
creation, and he was always to infer that, were he not fallible, he would
appreciate the fitness of things yet more strongly then he already did.
The identification of the Creator with nature is close to, but not identical
with, the pantheism of the philosopher Benedict Spinoza. It is made explicit
in the closing stanza, at lines 49–52:

To Thee, whose Temple is all Space,

Whose Altar, Earth, Sea, Skies;
One Chorus let all Being raise!
All Nature’s Incence raise!
(TE, vi, p. 148)

These were words that would not have gained anything like universal accep-
tance amongst Pope’s Christian contemporaries, as a Swiss critic of his Essay
on Man, Jean-Pierre de Crousaz, was quick to point out.13 Indeed, the very
notion of a universal prayer would have troubled many, with its problematic

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assumption that all humankind could accept the religion whose devotions the
prayer represented. Universality was a Christian desire rather than an apolo-
getic reality; only deists believed that something that Shaftesbury called “the
religion of all reasonable men” actually existed universally, let alone that its
sentiments could be expressed, whether in prose or in poetry.
We can detect in An Essay on Man much of the style of thinking associ-
ated with Bolingbroke and the higher deism (that is, the more theologically
sophisticated versions of freethinking, as opposed to the popular brands of
anti-Christian propaganda). Along with this goes a lack of reference to reve-
lation, and a reading of humanity’s place in creation very different from the
one found in Milton’s sacred mythology. One view is that the poem “assem-
bles, in a sort of brilliant disarray, the fractured systems of the age.”14 There
may well be designed inconsistency at work in the Essay, there may also be a
lack of philosophical finesse; what is not here is anything like a consistently
or straightforwardly Christian exercise in apologetics. That the Essay was
read by Crousaz as a deistic poem indicates that such an interpretation was
at least available to Pope’s readers; it took the intervention of Warburton to
save the appearances in order for a Christian interpretation safely to emerge.
Warburton was not the safest of apologists for Pope to have acquired.
His was a decidedly eccentric position in eighteenth-century religious life.
Warburton was best known for defending Christianity in his Divine Lega-
tion of Moses Demonstrated (1738–41) largely by appeal to an enormous
paradox, namely that Moses knew of a future life precisely because he had
hidden the revealed doctrine from his followers, a paradox which Warbur-
ton elaborated at great length in a welter of curious digressions covering,
inter alia, the very origins of written language, and confidently culminating
in controversial interpretations of classical literature. The whole exercise,
interestingly, was described as having been undertaken “on the principles
of a religious Deist,” precisely in order to undo deism on its own terms.
He had also defended, in his Alliance of Church and State, exactly that pro-
hibitive Whig establishment which deliberately discommoded Catholics such
as Pope. In many ways, it was an act of desperation that drew Pope, through
their mutual friend William Murray, later Lord Mansfield, into this unex-
pected and unpredictable apologetic alliance with Warburton. Was Pope
aware that accusations of deism would continue to be made were he to
go unchampioned by such a bullying critic (like Pope an autodidact)? If
so, Catholic deism was plainly in need of rescue by a variety of decidedly
unconventional Anglicanism that flattered itself as being orthodox.
It was against both Catholicism and deism that Warburton thunderously
declaimed in his reply to Crousaz, A Critical and Philosophical Commentary
on Mr. Pope’s Essay on Man (1742):

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There are two sorts of Writers, I mean the B i g o t and the Fr e e - t h i n k e r ,

that every honest Man in his Heart esteems no better than the Pests of Society;
as they are manifestly the Bane of Literature, and Religion. And whoever effec-
tively endeavours to serve either of These, is sure immediately to offend both
of Those. For, the Advancement of Literature is as favourable to true Piety, as
it is fatal to Superstition; and the Advancement of Religion is as propitious to
real Knowledge as discrediting to vain Science.

An Essay on Man contains both Catholic theology and elements of

freethinking: by saving it for orthodoxy, Warburton was probably know-
ingly undoing its philosophical core. Warburton’s reading imposed coher-
ence where A. D. Nuttall rightly sees rich disarray. Warburton insisted that
its precision and forcefulness were “rarely to be met with, even in the most
formal Treatises of Philosophy.” His overly systematic reading of the poem
turned it into just such a formal treatise, fatally undoing its vitality in the
process. All the more paradoxical, then, that it ends with an appeal to Chris-
tian charity voiced in the unmistakable accents of anti-Catholic Anglicanism.
Appealing to the example of the primitive Christians, was Warburton also
alluding to what he had done for a Catholic poet?

For their Faith being yet chaste from the Prostitutions of the Schools, and
their Hierarchy yet uncorrupted by the Gifts of Constantine, the Church knew
neither Bigotry nor Ambition, the two fatal Sources of uncharitable Zeal.15

Small wonder, then, that Pope, invoking the anti-clerical language of deism,
should have referred to Warburton, in a letter to his co-religionist Martha
Blount in August 1743, as “a sneaking Parson”. Intriguingly, as late as
April 1742, Pope had written to Warburton hoping to effect an introduc-
tion between his two friends: “I should not be sorry you saw so great a
genius, tho he & you were never to meet again” (Corr, iv, pp. 464, 394).
Warburton was laying a personal ghost as well as repelling a deistic threat
when he censured some of Bolingbroke’s posthumously produced philo-
sophical writings in his combative View of Lord Bolingbroke’s Philosophy
(1754–5).

Religion and rationalism

With or without Warburton’s tutelage, Pope was not afraid to take on the
cultural heroes of Whig England, and this was especially true of his treatment
of Newton and his theological lieutenant, Samuel Clarke. There is a trace of
condescension in Pope’s famous remark regarding the angels in the second
epistle of An Essay on Man (31–4):

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Superior Beings, when of late they saw

A mortal Man unfold all Nature’s law,
Admir’d such wisdom in an earthly shape,
And shew’d a N e w to n as we shew an Ape.
(TE, iii.i, pp. 59–60)

Newton has widely been seen in recent writing as a star in the firmament
of Whig cultural politics in the first half of the eighteenth century; to slight
him, however incidentally, was a politically significant act. To slight Samuel
Clarke was both a religious and a political act, and Clarke was subject to
much abuse in the fourth book of The Dunciad, produced when Pope had
cautiously moved from Bolingbroke to Warburton as his guide to the public
world.
In Book iv Pope famously registers a denunciation of religious rationalism,
in particular the errors attendant on dictating a priori grounds for belief in
God (lines 469–86):

All-seeing in thy mists, we want no guide,

Mother of Arrogance, and Source of Pride!
We nobly take the high Priori Road,
And reason downward, till we doubt of God:
Make Nature still incroach upon his plan;
And shove him off as far as e’er we can:
Thrust some Mechanic Cause into his place;
Or bind in Matter, or diffuse in Space.
Or, at one bound o’er-leaping all his laws,
Make God Man’s Image, Man the final Cause,
Find Virtue local, all Relation scorn,
See all in Self, and but for self be born:
Of nought so certain as our Reason still,
Of nought so doubtful as of Soul and Will.
Oh hide the God still more! And make us see
Such as Lucretius drew, a God like Thee:
Wrapt up in Self, a God without a Thought,
Regardless of our merit or default.
(TE, v, pp. 386–9)

This tirade is spoken by “a gloomy Clerk” (Dunciad, iv, 459), read in the
notes to the Twickenham edition of Pope as a sly allusion to Samuel Clarke,
who had argued in just such a manner for the existence of God in his Boyle
lectures for 1704. Pope’s challenge to a priori theology, elaborated in his notes
by Warburton, is typical of that undertaken by a number of Anglican divines
in the 1730s; it is also congruent with Bolingbroke’s freethinking critique of
Clarke’s theological method.16 The whole poem ends with a catalog of the

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dire consequences of such religious rationalism, one line of which presciently

alludes to the very definition of “ideology” that was to be developed some
fifty years later (Dunciad, iv, 646): “And Metaphysic calls for aid on Sense!”
Pope and Warburton had taken on the religious rationalism which they
thought gave too much ground to critics of Christianity, but Pope did so
by taking on a touchstone of Whiggish Anglicanism when berating Clarke
and his immediate influence. Warburton had to work hard in his notes to
contain this consequence, referring to “some better Reasoners” as falling
into error alongside the readily decried Hobbes, Spinoza, and Descartes.
The Whig religious establishment had been an object of rebuke to Pope, be
it as a Catholic or as a deist, but supremely as a poet. As Abigail Williams
has demonstrated in an important revaluation of his poetic contemporaries,
Pope had also had to take on a Whig literary culture whose considerable
contemporary strength has tended to be severely underestimated in modern,
canonically-weighted estimates of the period.17
Skepticism and subversion are endemic to verse, and the expression of the
fluidity of things, albeit sometimes held up by the excremental detritus of a
society of dunces, is peculiarly well suited to the articulations provided by the
free flow of Pope’s verse. Pope knew that things fall apart, even the classics of
verse, which he sought to refashion, and hence fleetingly preserve, through
translation; it was, however, the power of verse that enabled things to be
at least tolerable, and for their shortcomings to be analyzed in a medium
infinitely greater than any single attempt to alleviate those things. Pope’s
own verses were formed in such a mood of civilized and civilizing, if quietly
angry, skepticism.
Ideology could be reflected in verse, and simultaneously undercut by
it. Something of this process can be seen in autobiographical lines from
the Imitations of Horace in which Catholic dissent is subtly transformed
into poetic freedom as Pope inherits his father’s righteous sense of wrong
(Ep ii.ii, 52–67):

Bred up at home, full early I begun

To read in Greek, the Wrath of Peleus’s Son.
Besides, my Father taught me from a Lad,
The better Art to know the good from bad:
(And little sure imported to remove,
To hunt for Truth in Maudlin’s learned Grove.)
But knottier Points we knew not half so well,
Depriv’d us soon of our Paternal Cell;
And certain Laws, by Suff’rers thought unjust,
Deny’d all Posts of Profit or of Trust:
Hopes after Hopes of pious Papists fail’d,

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While mighty Wi l l i a m ’s thundring Arm prevail’d.

For Right Hereditary tax’d and fin’d,
He stuck to Poverty with Peace of Mind;
And me, the Muses help’d to undergo it;
Convict a Papist He, and I a Poet.
(TE, iv, pp. 167–9)

These lines have been read as a hereditary commitment to Jacobitism; they

also reflect a secularizing drift from religion to poetry as a means of ideolog-
ical resistance.
In conclusion, we may heed an important literary caveat that may
strengthen my reading of Pope’s contrast between “Papist” and “Poet”, a
contrast that can also be read as yet another shadowing and doubling in
his writings. Here it is well to bear in mind Helen Vendler’s warnings about
the relationship between poetry and what she insists is inadequately equated
with “ideas” by non-literary critics of poetry. Vendler offers a firmly estheti-
cized reading of the Essay on Man and other works by Pope, insisting that
“In poems, thinking is made visible not only to instruct but also to delight;
it must enter somehow into the imaginative and linguistic fusion engaged in
by the poem.” Again, as she argues:

“Ideas” undergo peculiar stresses when they are incorporated into powerful
poetry, and poets writing what we call “philosophical” verse are well aware
of the degree to which, once domesticated in the topologically flexible mode
of poetry, “ideas” are bent into peculiar shapes.

Having offered a variety of persuasive close readings, Vendler concludes that

Pope’s linguistic play leads to his admission of “man’s need for the guides of
system but at the same time his demonstration of the instability and insuffi-
ciency of all systems, whether literary, legal, or ethical.” Addressing the claim
that Pope’s is a “subversive” form of “thinking,” she opens the door to the
sort of historical and philosophical reading against which she signally warns
as being reductive.18 This essay has recognized that poetry is much more
powerful than the interpretative nets thrown over it by contextualists, but
it has also attempted to show that something valuable can always be gained
by contextualizing classic texts – provided, of course, that other readings,
not least esthetically alert ones, can be made alongside them.

NOTES
I am grateful to Mishtooni Bose, Noël Sugimura, and Abigail Williams for their
helpful comments and criticisms.
1. Mark Goldie, “Ideology,” in Political Innovation and Conceptual Change, ed.
Terence Ball (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). For important

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 b r i a n yo u n g

recent studies, including ideological readings of Pope, see Further Reading, pp.
237–246 below.
2. For some sense of the distinction implied here, see Quentin Skinner, “The Idea
of a Cultural Lexicon” in Visions of Politics, 3 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2002), vol. i, pp. 158–74.
3. For example Laura Brown’s comment: “In the poles of Pope’s poetic corpus . . .
we can catch a glimpse of the process that constitutes ideology: the movement of
history, the determining dynamic in which we can locate the meaning of Pope’s
poetry and make it our own.” See Brown’s Alexander Pope (Oxford: Blackwell,
1985), p. 158.
4. Brown, Alexander Pope, p. 27.
5. Douglas Brooks-Davies, Pope’s Dunciad and the Queen of Night: A Study in
Emotional Jacobitism (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985).
6. See the notes in the Twickenham edition to An Essay on Man, i, 267–8 (TE, iii.i,
p. 47); and to The Dunciad, ii, 367–8 (TE, v, pp. 144–5).
7. B. W. Young, “Matthew Tindal,” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography,
60 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), vol. liv, pp. 814–17; C. E.
Doble, D. W. Rannie and H. E. Salter, eds., Remarks and Collections of Thomas
Hearne, 11 vols. (Oxford: Printed for the Oxford Historical Society at the Claren-
dor Press, 1885–1921), vol. ii, pp. 332, 72; vol. iii, pp. 255, 381, 439; Abel Evans,
The Apparition (London, 1710), p. 6.
8. On Atterbury, see G. V. Bennett, The Tory Crisis in Church and State: The Career
of Francis Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester (Oxford: Clarendon, 1975); Eve-
line Cruickshanks and Howard Erskine-Hill, The Atterbury Plot (Basingstoke:
Palgrave, 2004).
9. Howard Erskine-Hill, “Alexander Pope: The Political Poet in his Time,”
Eighteenth-Century Studies 15 (1981–82): pp. 123–48; Howard Erskine-Hill,
The Poetry of Opposition and Revolution: Dryden to Wordsworth (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1996), pp. 57–109; Pat Rogers, Pope and the Destiny of the Stuarts
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 114–25.
10. Fred Parker, Scepticism and Literature: An Essay on Pope, Hume, Sterne, and
Johnson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 136, 130. Pope played
with the theme in the Imitations of Horace, Sat, ii.i, 63–8: “My Head and Heart
thus flowing thro’ my Quill, | Verse-man or Prose-man, term me which you will,
| Papist or Protestant, or both between, | Like good Erasmus in an honest Mean,
| In Moderation placing all my Glory, | While Tories call me Whig, and Whigs a
Tory” (TE, iv, p. 11).
11. Isaac Kramnick, Bolingbroke and his Circle: The Politics of Nostalgia in the Age
of Walpole (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968); Quentin Skinner,
“Augustan Party Politics and Renaissance Constitutional Thought,” in Visions
of Politics, 3 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), iii, pp. 344–
67; Christine Gerrard, The Patriot Opposition to Walpole: Poetry, Politics, and
National Myth 1725–1742 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994); Brean S. Hammond,
Pope and Bolingbroke: A Study of Friendship and Influence (Columbia: Univer-
sity of Missouri Press, 1984), pp. 113–4.
12. John Walsh and Stephen Taylor, “Introduction: the Church and Anglicanism in
the ‘long’ Eighteenth Century,” in The Church of England, c.1689–c.1833: From

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Toleration to Tractarianism, eds. John Walsh, Stephen Taylor and Colin Haydon
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 1–64 (p. 21).
13. Warburton wrote an exculpatory note, designed to free Pope from the charge
made by Crousaz that Pope’s work was coloured by fatalism and “Naturalism”
(cited in TE, vi, p. 150).
14. A. D. Nuttall, Pope’s “Essay on Man” (London: Allen & Unwin, 1984), pp. 191–
2.
15. William Warburton, A Critical and Philosophical Commentary on Mr. Pope’s
Essay on Man (London, 1742), pp. xvii, 181, 184.
16. For a fuller statement, see B. W. Young, “‘See Mystery to Mathematics fly!’:
Pope’s Dunciad and the Critique of Religious Rationalism,” Eighteenth-Century
Studies 27 (1993): pp. 435–48.
17. Abigail Williams, Poetry and the Creation of a Whig Literary Culture 1681–1714
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
18. Helen Vendler, Poets Thinking: Pope, Whitman, Dickinson, Yeats (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), pp. 9, 12, 35, 36.

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 10
H O WA R D E R S K I N E - H I L L

Pope and the poetry of opposition

Introduction
It is long since Pope has been seen as reclining in the bosom of a complacent
eighteenth-century establishment. In the middle and later decades of the last
century a particular focus was directed on to the Pope of 1729–43 as a poet of
political opposition. Pope’s target was here seen as the long premiership of Sir
Robert Walpole and the generally unenlightened attitudes of King George I
and King George II. Then, towards the end of the last century, a sharper focus
was directed on to the less overtly political implications of some of Pope’s
earlier works, notably Windsor-Forest and The Rape of the Lock, with the
result that a concern with, probably a sympathy with, Jacobite attitudes
was detected. (Jacobites were those who held that the exiled royal line of
the Stuarts, rather than the incumbent line of the Hanoverians, were the
true kings of Britain.) One consequence of this later work was to suggest an
ideological substructure for Pope’s more salient poetry of political opposition
in the period 1729–43.
We have abundant discussion of the earlier phase in Pope’s career. Whilst
it is wrong to impute direct involvement in the Jacobite movement by asso-
ciation, it cannot be without significance that so many of the poet’s closest
friends among the Catholic gentry and nobility had extensive links to the
leaders of the Rising in 1715/16, and several members of their families took
an active part in the rebellion. More complex issues arise in the case of the
Atterbury Plot, a decade later, and in the later phase when Pope became
associated with the Patriot opposition to Robert Walpole in the 1730s. The
Atterbury affair (1722–3) saw Walpole and his henchmen uncover a Jaco-
bite conspiracy to invade the country and instal the Pretender, James Edward
Stuart, on the throne. It was led by Francis Atterbury (1662–1732), Bishop
of Rochester and leader of the High Church party. He also enjoyed a close
friendship with Pope, who, as we shall see, was summoned to give evidence
at the bishop’s trial in the House of Lords. This episode brought the poet’s

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beliefs and alliances more directly into collision with political actualities
than any previous event. In what follows I shall be primarily concerned with
these later stages in Pope’s political life. The main discussion will center on
his relations with Walpole, and will reconsider the role of a comparatively
neglected figure, the lawyer William Fortescue, who was, for a long time,
close to the prime minister. These relationships hold a particular importance
for some of Pope’s Imitations of Horace.
There is now probably a consensus regarding Pope as a poet of politi-
cal opposition, and in fact the first such poet in English literature, but this
consensus remains somewhat blurred at the edges, as different eighteenth-
century circumstances emerge into view. Is Pope’s attack, when he attacks,
cultural rather than political? Is it political as well as cultural, and, if so, is it
that of a “loyal opposition” to two uninspiring Hanoverian Kings, or an early
part of a long collective trajectory of political thought which would lead away
from monarchy altogether towards what many present-day citizens of the
USA, and of other states, might think of as an enlightened republicanism?1
The temptations of a retrospective interpretation which seems to ratify the
fortunate present (“Whig History”) may, on the other hand, be set aside in
favour of a true historicist view which attempts to interpret Pope in terms of
the political alternatives apparent in Pope’s own time. In particular, if we are
to think about political alternatives, we need to remember that in the second
decade of the eighteenth century the Whigs themselves were divided into
two factions: the Stanhope-Sunderland faction in office, and the Walpole-
Townshend faction out of office. Taking a longer view, the salient political
alternative to men of Pope’s generation was the Jacobite option: a restoration
of the exiled Stuart dynasty.
To come to a minor but significant episode in Pope’s life, James Craggs
the younger (1686–1721), who succeeded Joseph Addison as Secretary of
State, offered Pope in 1718 a pension of £300 a year, confidentially, from the
secret-service money in his hands (Anecdotes, i, pp. 99–100). Both Craggs
and Addison were Whigs, but Craggs was a personal friend while Addison
had been a known enemy (see Anecdotes, i, pp. 66–72.). Pope nevertheless
refused the offer, though in polite and grateful terms. Pope needed money
at this time. His refusal may have been political – perhaps he would have
accepted a subvention from a Tory minister under Queen Anne – or it may
have been an assertion of moral independence.
Needing money is one thing, but political danger is another. The general
debates sketched in above form a significant background to an important
episode in Pope’s life and literary biography which has perhaps received
insufficient attention, even from Maynard Mack’s magisterial biography. I
am referring to that strange development, after the trial and expulsion of

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Bishop Atterbury in 1723 for Jacobite conspiracy, when Pope, contrary, one
would have thought, to every expectation, appeared to have become on
social terms with Walpole. I shall argue here that this strange rapproche-
ment was probably brought about by Pope’s friend William Fortescue, a
trusted assistant of Walpole, and a figure in Pope’s biography of acknowl-
edged importance but very little explored. Although Fortescue left no records
of the negotiation, Pope’s letters to him clearly suggest that it was he who
instigated the rapprochement of Walpole with Pope.

The Atterbury affair and its aftermath

In 1723 Francis Atterbury was expelled from England following a Bill of
Pains and Penalties brought against him by the House of Commons and the
House of Lords for Jacobite conspiracy (a condemnation won, it has been
suggested, on evidence forged at the behest of Walpole). Pope now stood in
considerable danger, derived from several sources.
First, his edition of The Works of John Sheffield Duke of Buckingham
(1723), which contained, as Pope was well aware, some satirical reflections
on the revolution of 1688 and the expulsion of the Stuart, James II, was
called in during the Atterbury Plot crisis and expurgated.2 Only later did the
expurgated material creep back into the public realm. Then, in the Atterbury
Plot, Pope’s kinsfolk, the Rackett family of Hallgrove, near Bagshot, were
discovered to have been guilty of “Blacking” (which earlier meant smuggling
or stealing deer but, now that the Blacks had been recruited into the Atterbury
Plot, also referred to treasonable conspiracy). Third, Pope was not only
known as an intimate friend of the condemned Atterbury but had actually
given evidence on his behalf at his trial in the House of Lords, although he
may have in terror, or in a deliberate bad show, bungled his evidence. Then
the Atterbury Plot itself, far from a little blip in the story of the survival of the
new Whig establishment, was a very severe international move against the
Hanoverian dynasty and its Whig administrations; three attempts were made
to exploit disastrous British circumstances and anti-Hanoverian opinion in
the period 1721–3. Only the death of the Earl of Sunderland, First Minister
in the latest Whig administration, who had been dealing underhand with
some of the Jacobite Tories, had prompted the French government to reveal
what they knew of the Plot, thus giving Walpole, back in the government
after a period out of office, the opportunity to make his career. There was a
final point of danger. Walpole wished to intimidate Catholic Jacobites abroad
by punitive taxation of Catholic landowners at home, even if the latter had
had nothing whatsoever to do with the Plot. This he bluntly admitted at a
meeting with some Catholic noblemen and gentlemen who appealed against

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his new measures.3 Pope was not a landowner, but he was certainly now a
famous poet, known to be a Catholic, and had been attacked as a Jacobite.
He too, surely, might have been used in Walpole’s campaign of intimidation.
William Fortescue was in an ideal position to reverse any such strategy.
It is uncertain when Fortescue first began to assist Walpole in political and
family affairs. The first documentary evidence of his being “Secretary to the
Right Honble. The Chancellor of the Excheq.r ” is dated 27 June 1724. The
first evidence of his involvement in Walpole family matters in Devon appears
to be of 1722.4 Pope seems to have known Fortescue (through his friend John
Gay) around 1713 (Corr, i, p. 195). It is in letters from Pope to Fortescue
that we learn of Pope’s growing acquaintance with Walpole. One is reduced
to hypothesis as to the bargain Fortescue may have brokered at this point,
1723, since no written evidence of it seems to survive. Pope had written to
Atterbury that he himself, perhaps, must expect to follow the Bishop into
exile (Corr, ii, p. 167). Fortescue probably wanted to make Pope’s position in
England safe and permanent. This will have involved trying to save Pope from
himself, and from his wide range of disaffected acquaintance. This might
be done if Pope and Walpole could be induced to get socially acquainted
with one another. What would Walpole gain from such a bargain? (Here
one may suspect something of a personal favour granted by Walpole to
Fortescue.) However, the bad treatment of a famous poet might well have
been represented rather as an opportunity for Jacobite propaganda than a
means of intimidating Jacobite Englishmen abroad. This hypothesis is quite
well borne out by social and literary evidence to be presented here, but it does
remain hypothesis, not proof. Still, so surprising a turn of events demands
some explanation.
The epistolary record opens with Pope’s letter to Fortescue of 10 May
1725 (Corr, ii, p. 294). Pope writes:

I intended to tell you first, how kind Sir R. Walpole has been to me, for you must
know he did the thing, with more dispatch, than I could use in acknowledging
or telling the News of it. Pray thank him for obliging you, (that is me) so readily:
and do it in strong terms, for I was awkward in it, when I first mentioned it
to him. He may think me a worse Man than I am, tho’ he thinks me a better
Poet perhaps: and he may know that I am much more his Servant, than those
who would flatter him in their Verses.

Pope adds that he will adhere to his rule to wait until a statesman is out of
power before he will say what he thinks of him (in this case that the states-
man has been kind and prompt). These are warm terms, even though one
plainly detects awkwardness and a residual assertion of moral independence.
Walpole must not be allowed to think that he has bought anything, nor that

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Pope expects any further favor. What this favor was does depend upon the
date of the letter, but George Sherburn’s hypothesis that it was Walpole’s
treasury order for £200 to support the new Odyssey translation, signed in
April 1725, is convincing. On 23 September 1725, Pope tells Fortescue that
Walpole has visited him “spirited thither by Lord Peterborrow . . .” while at
Twickenham the great man expressed his support for Mrs. Howard in her
land disputes with Vernon, Pope’s own landlord (Corr, ii, p. 323).
On 17 February 1726 Pope writes in a letter to Fortescue with a new tone:

I told you I din’d ’tother day at Sir Robert Walpole’s. A thing has happen’d
since which gives me uneasiness, from the indiscretion of one who dined there
at the same time; one of the most innocent words that ever I dropped in my
life, has been reported out of that conversation, which might reasonably seem
odd, if ever it comes to Sir R.’s ears. I will tell it you the next time we meet; as
I would him if I had seen him since . . . We live in unlucky times, when half
one’s friends are enemies to the other . . . and consequently care not that any
equal moderate man should have more friends than they themselves have.
(Corr, ii, pp. 368–9)

Walpole could, of course, be terrifying. He would go about Parliament hint-

ing to suspect MPs that he had evidence, or almost enough evidence, of their
treason. If Pope had seemed to utter a disaffected word at the great man’s
own table, that would have been an offense indeed. Pope for the moment
clung to the character of an “equal moderate man,” which one suspects
would have been welcome to Fortescue, and which would be the seed of
several poetic affirmations of moderation in Pope’s poetry of the 1730s.
Perhaps rapprochement was in the air. In April of 1726 Swift revisited
England with the manuscript of Gulliver’s Travels in his luggage. Pope writes
to Fortescue that “Lord Peterborrow and Lord Harcourt propose to carry
him to Sir R. Walpole” (Corr, ii, p. 373). Apparently Walpole had already
entertained Swift to dinner at Chelsea, but Peterborough secured for Swift a
subsequent interview. This Swift used to press the claims of Ireland. Walpole
gave him an hour, talked largely of Ireland, but in a manner so “alien” to
the assumptions of Swift that the Dean concluded that all his representations
were in vain.5 Stories like these, if in circulation, may attest to a general idea
that at this time a rapprochement between Walpole and the more militant
Scriblerians was a possibility.
In a letter of 5 August 1727 from Pope to Fortescue relations between
them seem to have somewhat relaxed: “I returned but 2 days since, but in
my Return waited on Sir R. W. and told him, it was you that made me so
troublesome at his Sunday-Tables, and disturbing to his Sabbath-days of
Rest” (Corr, ii, p. 441). Pope goes on, in the same paragraph, to mention

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quite easily “Mr Gulliver’s Cousin” and John Gay. Late in 1728 Pope is
intending to go to another of Walpole’s Sunday dinners (Corr, ii, p. 530). On
7 June 1730 Pope reports to Fortescue that he has recently been at Sir Robert’s
but that, apparently seeing Walpole and Fortescue together, “thought men
of business should be left to each other” and so did not obtrude. He has
accepted an invitation from Walpole “Next Sunday . . . where I therefore
desire you would dine.” Sherburn comments that Pope may well have wanted
“Fortescue as a shield” in view of Swift’s recent “Libel on Dr. Delany,” which
praised Pope as an opposition figure, and about which Pope had complained
to Fortescue on 20 February 1730 (Corr, iii, p. 91). Swift’s poem, for which
he had but just apologized (“whimsical . . . never intended for the publick”),
had been published in London on 9 February and must have made Pope’s new
Fortescuvian role as “an equal moderate man” almost impossible to play.
But, by this time, not without apparently two more remarkable favors to
Pope, the rapprochement between poet and premier was coming to an end.

Mending fences
This rapprochement was probably at its strongest in 1728–9. In 1728 Pope
made his bid to help secure for his old friend and mentor Father South-
cott, OSB, the Abbey of St. André at Villeneuve-les-Avignon. This episode
does not figure in Pope’s correspondence but in the anecdotes preserved by
Joseph Spence (Anecdotes, ii, p. 615). As a result the simple tale that Pope
originally told Spence that the priest who had originally saved Pope’s life
when he was a boy was rewarded, twenty years later, by a beautiful French
abbey secured for him by Walpole, begins to look a more complex and very
much more interesting affair. In the first place, Southcott was deliberately
seeking appointment to this Benedictine abbey. He proposed that he should
serve as an absentee (not uncommon) and that all the abbot’s income should
be devoted not to himself but to funding Alexander Michael Ramsay, the
Chevalier Ramsay, the brilliant Jacobite Scot now living in France, whom
Southcott had recommended as the tutor to the infant Charles Edward, the
Jacobite Prince of Wales.6 What had Walpole to do with all this? He did not
have the Abbey of St. André in his gift. England was, however, in renewed
alliance with France, and Walpole might have effectively protested to Cardi-
nal Fleury and the French government if they had allowed the appointment
of Southcott to go through. For Southcott was not only a well-known and
passionate Jacobite, but it was he above all who had organized what even-
tuated as the formal protest of the French government against Walpole’s
punitive taxation of peaceable English Catholics.7 Pope’s move was not to
ask Walpole to secure the abbey for Southcott, which obviously the minister

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could not have done, but rather to ask him not to protest in the event of
Southcott being elected. What Pope precisely did was to write a letter to
Walpole by Fortescue (Anecdotes, i, p. 31).
William Fortescue, then, was continuing in his office of attempting to
bind Pope and Walpole together. In this case it was far from a matter of
a subscription to Pope’s Odyssey translation, or invitations to Walpole’s
Sunday dinners. This was an international affair, and, not only that, but one
which involved two active British Jacobites abroad, Southcott and Ramsay.
If Walpole wished to grant Pope a favour, this was a very considerable one,
and one that will have run against the statesman’s strongest prejudices. Pope
must have initiated the idea, as Spence recounts, and it is notable that it
involved no material advantage to Pope himself. The proposal presupposes
a remarkable degree of confidence in Pope that, even with the good offices
of Fortescue, such a matter could be raised without throwing Walpole into
a fury. What could Fortescue have said in its favour? Perhaps that Walpole
had checked the Jacobite threat, at least for the time being, that Atterbury
in exile had had no success, that Ramsay had been eased out of his tutorship
of Charles Edward and could now be accounted a mere intellectual. By the
same token Southcott’s ambition to influence indirectly the Jacobite Prince
of Wales had been checked too, though not by Walpole. Things seemed
to have quietened down. Perhaps “the great man” could afford to grant a
favor?
But why would he wish to do so? And, apart from general goodwill to
Pope, what would Fortescue’s motives be on this particular occasion? Per-
haps the most obvious hypothesis is the most convincing. In 1720 Pope’s
friend Robert Digby had written to him, not without some irony, to con-
gratulate him on “the return of the Golden-age” of which one positive sign
was “when I find you frequently with a First-minister” – this was James
Craggs the younger (Corr, ii, p. 51). He alluded to the celebrated Augus-
tan age when political power and the highest arts seemed to have grown
freely together: Virgil and Horace under the princeps Augustus. Pope had,
as a poet who remained a Catholic, struggled up into fame under those laws
“by Suffrers thought unjust,” as Pope would later put it in one of his Hor-
atian epistles (TE, iv, p. 169), and with his Iliad translation really seemed
the great English poet of the age. Fortescue will have remembered the not
entirely straightforward convergence of the Virgil and Horace with Augustus
(Horace had fought for Brutus and Cassius at Philippi) but is likely to have
thought that there were the greatest precedents for reconciliation. Walpole,
less likely to have been seized with classical parallels, would have seen the
utility of this one. As Tone Sundt Urstad has shown, Walpole had plenty
of his own poets to take his side (not just Edward Young),8 but to “turn”

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Pope, writer of the great modern Iliad translation and admirer of Walpole’s
archenemy, Atterbury, that would be a coup indeed.

William Fortescue
Whatever the motives, Fortescue must have been in favour of Walpole grant-
ing Pope’s request in the Southcott affair. It would be good to know more
about Fortescue than the bare facts recited above, but it seems that he decided
discreetly to destroy the records of his multifarious political, legal, and social
activities. He made an exception of a substantial amount of correspondence
with Pope (some of which has already been quoted above). From Pope’s let-
ters we know that Fortescue was attempting to unravel the financial affairs
of the poet’s half-sister, Magdalen Rackett, whose family fortune had col-
lapsed as a result of the Atterbury Plot. Her husband, Charles Rackett, and
her son Michael, seem to have fled abroad after the discovery of the plot,
leaving their affairs in confusion.
Fortescue came of an old Devon landed family and inherited an estate in
the north of the county. He was first educated along with John Gay at the
little Grammar School in Barnstaple. On the early death of his wife Fortescue
resolved upon a public career in law (he never remarried), but his enjoyment
of the company of men of letters, particularly (no doubt through Gay) the
Scriblerian group, is evident before his Devonian provenance and remote
kinship with Walpole’s daughter-in-law, Margaret Rolle, drew him into the
business circles of Robert Walpole.9 Quite early Fortescue wrote a literary
piece in praise of Pope, while Gay in “Mr. Pope’s Welcome from Greece”
includes Fortescue among the crowds of friends who, according to the myth
of his genial poem, throng the sides of the Thames to celebrate the new
Iliad translation.10 Before this Pope and Fortescue collaborated in Stradling
versus Stiles, one of the funniest satires on law in the eighteenth century,
and a delight to read (Prose, ii, pp. 131–42). Two portraits of Fortescue
were painted. The first, by Pope’s friend Jervas, was on the occasion in 1730
when Fortescue was appointed Attorney General to Prince Frederick, as the
document in his hand begins to proclaim. Though he looks a heavy and
important figure a slight smile seems to lurk around his lips, as well it might
since it was Jervas who had earlier written of ridens Fortescuvius, “laughing
Fortescue” (Corr, i, pp. 340–1). The later portrait by Thomas Hudson is
impressively serious, with challenge, knowledge, and sadness in the face, a
good picture of an intelligent and experienced judge.
What was Fortescue’s true attitude to Walpole? It was not, I think, that
of a timeserver, though he was probably capable of being that. It seems to
have been one of admiration and gratitude. A few letters to Walpole from

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Fortescue are preserved in Walpole’s papers. On 23 August 1734 he wrote

a circumstantial letter concerning the possible appointment of the Town
Clerk of Newport, Isle of Wight, to the “Sine Cure” of “Master Gunner of
Carisbroke Castle.” Fortescue has gone through the motions of supporting
the Town Clerk’s appointment, but thinks he “will Do his majesty more
service in the Burrough as a Burgess, than in the Castle as a Gunner.” He
thus excuses himself for the steps he has taken and rounds off this rou-
tine piece of business in a not wholly routine way: “yet you’l Easily I dare
say, Sr . believe that in this as Every thing Else my whole dependance is
on you.”11 Fortescue has been a balanced diplomat in a small affair. Nev-
ertheless his clear advice and complete submission to Walpole are plainly
expressed.
On a later occasion, around August 1739, Fortescue begs a place as sur-
veyor for Mr. Scobell, but will not press it if Walpole would rather give it
to the nephew of Mr. Scrope. “I would not desire the best Place you could
give, either for my self or my Friend, at the Expence of Giving you the
least uneasiness.” This application failed. A year later, Fortescue again puts
Walpole in mind of “poor mr Scobel” who now seeks the post of “collec-
tor of Plymouth”.12 Fortescue must have written countless such letters, or
on countless occasions spoken to Walpole in this way (including, no doubt,
Pope’s application on behalf of Father Southcott). His method was to make a
case, but then to submit entirely to the great man, who must not be made to
feel under pressure. Kindness, perseverance, practicality, and understanding
of Walpole, seem to mark his efforts.
Fortescue was one of the two MPs for Newport, Isle of Wight, from 1727–
36, in the government interest. The Isle of Wight Record Office shows in what
esteem he was held in Newport (high among the burgesses, less high perhaps
among the populace). When he gave a political dinner in Newport he sent
the bill to Walpole. He was King’s Counsel in 1730, Baron of the Exchequer
(judge of the Exchequer court) in 1736, Justice of the Common Pleas in 1738,
Master of the Rolls and Privy Councillor in 1741.13

The Dunciad and the 1730s

The story of Pope’s rapprochement with Walpole now passes back into liter-
ary history. We come to that extraordinary moment when Walpole appears
to have presented Pope’s Dunciad Variorum to George II. On 17 June 1728
Pope had written to the Earl of Oxford that, like Oxford himself, “the High-
est & most Powerful Person in this Kingdom” had commanded a “Key to
The Dunciad” (Corr, ii, p. 502). This must of course refer to the unextended
1728 version of the poem. Oxford was involved in the distribution of The

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Dunciad Variorum and, sometime in March 1729, Pope wrote to him to hold
in the copies until the two men should next meet. On 13 March he writes to
Oxford: “You are now at full liberty to publish all my faults & Enormities;
The King & Queen had the book yesterday by the hands of Sir R. W.” (Corr,
iii, pp. 25–6). From this it would seem that copies were held back until the
royal presentation had been made, on 12 April. The next we hear is a letter
to Swift from Dr Arbuthnot, dated 19 March 1729, which avers that “The
King upon perusal of the last edition of his Dunciad, Declared he [Pope]
was a very honest Man.” Later, in 1732, Richard Savage, who was close to
Pope at this time, wrote of Walpole’s presentation of the 1729 Dunciad to
the King and Queen “(who had before been pleased to read it).”14
This is all the evidence we have for a very unlikely event which may, nev-
ertheless, have actually occurred. We note that the sources are all Pope or
those close to him. There is a further question about Arbuthnot’s report
to Swift. An “honest man” was a cant term for a Jacobite, in circles sup-
porting the Pretender. Since Arbuthnot’s family background was Jacobite,
and his brother was a Jacobite banker in Paris, he will have known this.
Was Arbuthnot sharing with Swift a fictionalizing jest, or, did George II,
who may not have been much interested in poetry, but generally knew his
enemies, hereby indicate that he knew very well the anti-Hanoverian trend
of the work? There are other, related, problems about the story of the pre-
sentation of The Dunciad. Can George and Caroline really have been suf-
ficiently interested in Pope’s anonymous 1728 poem, filled with asterisks,
initials and blanks though it was, to have commanded a Key and agreed to
a presentation? (Possibly Caroline might have been curious if anyone had
drawn her attention to Pope’s not very handsome-looking 1728 production.)
Another problem is that the anti-Hanoverian innuendo of the 1728 poem
was early picked up by Pope’s enemies, including the sharp-eyed Matthew
Concanen, one of Walpole’s coterie of pro-government poets.15 Fortescue, if
he saw the poem, would have immediately recognized its trend, and surely
would have warned his friend Walpole to keep clear of it. There are three pos-
sibilities here, none of which seems at all probable. Firstly, Walpole did indeed
present the poem at court, knowing the nature of the work, and George II did
indeed say what was reported (whatever that meant). Secondly, Pope duped
Walpole into the presentation, and the great man was perhaps unwarned
by Fortescue, Concanen or anyone else. Thirdly – and this is no doubt a
long shot – the whole report of the poem’s presentation is a fictional practi-
cal joke on the part of Pope and his close friends, Arbuthnot, Oxford, and
Savage.16
Whatever really happened, damage limitation must soon have been the
order of the day. The project for reconciliation had overshot its mark. Some

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of the original poem’s innuendo could be brushed off onto the dunces fighting
back against Pope. Some spaces and gaps had in the 1729 Dunciad been
filled in not too offensively. “Still Dunce the Second reigns like Dunce the
First?” remained (Dunciad, i, 6). As the dust settled, the episode, whether
factual or fictional, may seem to have cast a certain air of comedy over
the Pope/Fortescue/Walpole triangle of relations. This was an atmosphere
different from anything Pope felt at the end of the Atterbury trial. It can be
seen in that very daring and various imitation of Horace’s Satire ii.i which
Pope had originally considered addressing to Fortescue, and which includes
within it Fortescue’s own point of view. Pope’s letter to Fortescue about the
poem was written three days after its publication.

I wish you a judge, that you may sleep and be quiet; ut in otia tuta recedas
[so that you may retire into a secure leisure], but otium dignitate [leisure with
dignity]: have you seen my imitation of Horace? I fancy it will make you
smile; but though, when I first begun it, I thought of you; before I came to
end it I consider’d it might be too ludicrous, to a man of your situation and
grave acquaintance, to make you Trebatius, who was yet one of the most
considerable lawyers of his time, and a particular friend of a poet. In both
which circumstances I rejoice that you resemble him, but am chiefly pleased
that you do it in the latter. (Corr, iii, p. 351)

The lawyer, Trebatius, was the other participant in the dialogue which was
Horace’s poem; rather than name Fortescue, Pope in his title refers to “his
Learned Council.” The secret was well kept. Apparently it was made public
only in Warburton’s 1751 edition of Pope’s Works. Pope’s letter, to those
who know his correspondence well, has unmistakable notes of further dam-
age limitation: “make you smile” may be translated as “I fear you may be
annoyed.” This, perhaps, because Pope’s poem in fact draws laughing Fortes-
cue out of the circles of social humour into the public realm of printed polit-
ical satire. In the poem, after Pope has ridiculed bad poets who have praised
George II as heroic, the “Learned Council” joins the game, and ridicules
those who praise the sweet Hanoverian princesses (29–32). “Learned Coun-
cil” is also drawn into the admission that, since “Laws are explain’d by
Men,” the approval of Sir Robert would probably be enough to get the poet
off a libel charge. This, the conclusion of the satire, is at once funny and
frightening. What if Sir Robert does not approve?
This scary edge replicates a balance that Pope maintains throughout his
poem within its apparent spontaneity and conversational case. On the one
hand the poet likes the idea of being an “equal moderate man.” As he puts
it here:

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 Pope and the poetry of opposition

My Head and Heart thus flowing thro’ my Quill,

Verse-man or Prose-man, term me which you will,
Papist or Protestant, or both between
Like Good Erasmus in an honest Mean,
In Moderation placing all my Glory,
While Tories call me Whig, and Whigs a Tory.
(63–8)

On the other hand he sharpens up Horace in his propensity for moral attack:
“P. What? Arm’d for Virtue when I point the Pen” (105). This poem has been
very much discussed in recent decades, and we have learnt, I believe, that it is
in no way a systematically philosophical poem. The two leading attitudes of
Pope, the moderate poet and the attacking poet (even if the attacked are the
greatest in the land) are psychologically reconciled in the idea of freedom
to speak and write. The Dunciad and this poem are the public marks, in
the second case very plain, that Pope has now shaken off those constraints
entailed upon him by his reconciliation with Walpole. It remains a more
personal poem than has yet been appreciated, supplying a reprise of those
discussions which must have taken place between Fortescue and Pope when
the surprising reconciliation was afoot. Even the phrase “Council learned in
the Law” – no doubt, then, a general term in law courts – occurs in exactly
this form in a Devon deed of 1727 to which Fortescue and Walpole set their
signatures.17
The darker tones Pope had introduced into his letters to Fortescue about
Walpole, recalled in the imitation of Satire ii.i, are present also in Pope’s
epistle To Augustus (1737). He was, as he had said to Fortescue, “much more
his [Walpole’s] servant than those who would flatter him in their Verses”
(Corr, ii, p. 294). He had, he said, suffered “uneasiness” at having “innocent
words” misconstrued and reported (Corr, ii, pp. 368–9). Gratitude for favors
granted by Walpole had not made him feel easy or secure. In the end the
intention of open defiance made him feel more easy, and this led directly to
those lines in Pope’s To Augustus for which there is no full equivalent in
Horace:

And when I flatter let my dirty leaves . . .

Befringe the rails of Bedlam and Sohoe.
(415–19; TE, iv, p. 231)

In other respects To Augustus is a suave poem. It does not display a sustained

passage of defiance as does Sat, ii.i, though it shows flashes of anger as in
the lines which defend Swift (221–5). Generally its polite idiom sharpens
its ironies, and this in turn creates a kind of diplomatic comedy which a

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reader such as Fortescue may well have relished. Pope follows Horace in not
lambasting the literary achievement of the present age. He has good things
to say, albeit selective and carefully moderated, about a famous poet such
as Addison, by whom he personally knew he had been in his literary career
betrayed, and about a timeserving poet such as Colley Cibber, whom he now
detested. Thus:

(excuse some Courtly stains)

No whiter page than Addison’s remains.
(215–16)

Note, not only the slightly explicit exception in line 215, but the terms of the
second line: “No whiter page [my italics]”: Pope will not talk of Addison’s
deeds. The poem is also full of glancing reflections on Cibber, who never
appears as Poet Laureate of the great George Augustus, but, in diplomatic
mode, finds something it can fairly commend: the people’s voice is surely
wrong if it denies praise to Cibber’s The Careless Husband (1704), lines 89–
92. This comically diplomatic tone slightly reduces the growing gap between
Walpole and his friends on the one hand and Pope on the other.
Pope’s allusions to Walpole by name continue, as is well-known, from
Satire ii.i into the two 1738 Dialogues which in due course would form the
Epilogue to the Satires. Taken out of context they seem half-friendly and it
must be remembered that they are found in poems which constitute perhaps
the most powerful attack either Swift or Pope ever mounted against Hanove-
rian Britain with Walpole at the helm. “Go see Sir Ro b e rt ,” suggests Pope’s
adversarius in the first dialogue:

P. See Sir Ro b e rt – hum –

And never laugh – for all my life to come?
Seen him I have, but in his happier hour
Of Social Pleasure, ill-exchang’d for Pow’r;
Seen him uncumber’d with the Venal tribe,
Smile without Art, and win without a Bribe.
(27–32; TE, iv, pp. 299–300)

The last two lines were, according to the Pope-Warburton footnote of 1751,
originally in the poem, dropped from the first edition, then subsequently
replaced (TE, iv, p. 300). Friendliness of this sort is quite damaging. Line
28 may allude to the danger and discomfort of a man of Pope’s sort being
within Walpole’s circle.
A qualified portrait also occurs in Dialogue ii. Among Pope’s examples
of lying, found there, is the allegation that “Sir Robert’s mighty dull, | Has
never made a Friend in private life, | And was, besides, a Tyrant to his Wife”

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(133–5; TE, iv, pp. 320–1). Walpole’s worst enemies knew he was intelligent,
had a gift for personal friendship, and had tolerated his wife’s infidelities.
Pope, writing to Fortescue, on 31 July of this year, seeming to signal that
he still held Walpole in high esteem (“I went home, and drank Sir Robert’s
health with T. Gordon”) says also of Walpole in this letter: “You see I have
made him a second compliment in print in my second Dialogue, and he ought
to take it for no small one, since in it I couple him with Lord Bol –” (Corr, iv,
p. 114). The paralleling of Walpole’s with Bolingbroke’s name here is not only
provocative but of some significance, since it was Bolingbroke’s enterprise,
soon after his return to England after the Atterbury Plot, to attempt to build
up an united opposition to Walpole: Jacobite Tory, Hanoverian Tory, anti-
Walpole Whig. This campaign, conducted chiefly through The Craftsman
journal, and associated pamphlets and poems, supplied a shield for Pope’s
poetry of opposition. In the light of Bolingbroke’s campaign, Pope’s poetry
of opposition may have been unwelcome, or seemed ungrateful, but it could
not on the face of it be branded as treason. The concept of “treason” was
on the one hand wide and terrifying, on the other hand (to those eager to
charge political enemies with treason) frustratingly narrow. The great recent
example of charges of treason was in the Atterbury Plot, the shadow of
which was cast upon the next two decades.18
Near the end of the 1743 Dunciad, as the last great yawn of Dulness
begins to open, which is to bring an end, in Pope’s myth, to both England
and creation, Pope writes:

Wide, and more wide, it spread o’er all the realm;

Ev’n Palinurus nodded at the Helm.
(613–14; TE, v, p. 405)

Palinurus, the helmsman of Aeneas, in Virgil’s Aeneid, was never, in numer-

ous crises, the subject of reproof in that poem, though finally (deceived by
the god Somnus) falling asleep at the helm and falling into the sea. Edward
Young had praised Walpole as Palinurus, “pilot of the realm” in the seventh
satire of his Universal Passion (1728). By 1743 Walpole had finally fallen
from power. The tone of Pope’s allusion is in no way vituperative or tri-
umphant, fuelling charges of ingratitude. Certainly, Pope blamed Walpole
and the Hanoverian establishment for the triumph of Dulness and darkness,
so Walpole is in a sense victim of himself. On the other hand, the parallel
is complimentary, and suffused with Virgilian sadness. Walpole had at least
faithfully served the de facto King he recognized. Even Fortescue will have
thought this was no ungracious epitaph by Pope on Walpole’s two decades
of political power, while the ironically barbed “compliments” of the Epi-
logue to the Satires carry, so far as “private life” was concerned, a residual

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positive charge which was the legacy of Fortescue’s attempt to bring Pope
and Walpole together.
Pope, then, clearly continued to write “oppositional” poetry throughout
the 1730s. But his complicated dealings with Walpole, as mediated by Fortes-
cue, suggest some of the difficulties involved in defining him narrowly as a
member of the opposition, tout court. As with other aspects of his person-
ality, his political identity was made up of many different components, all
registered in the subtle modulations of his poetry.

NOTES
1. For important modern studies of Pope’s political views and the contemporary
background, see Further Reading, pp. 237–246 below.
2. John Sheffield, The Works of John Sheffield Duke of Buckingham, ed. Alexander
Pope 2 vols. (London: Printed by John Barber, 1723). The offending pieces were
“Some Account of the Revolution” (vol. ii, pp. 70–102) and “A Feast of the
Gods” (vol. ii, pp. 159–71). In 1722 Pope had written to his Jacobite friend
John Caryll that Buckingham’s Works will contain “many things . . . you will be
particularly glad to see in relation to some former reigns” (Corr, ii, pp. 117).
3. Father Thomas Southcott to Cardinal Fleury, 28 September 1722 (Royal
Archives: Stuart Papers [henceforth RASP], 63/128; 64/64). The Catholic Lord
Stafford, Southcott’s nephew, and other Catholics had a meeting with Walpole
to protest at the threat of punitive taxation.
4. Cambridge University Library, Cholmondeley (Houghton) MSS. 57 (henceforth
Ch. (H) MSS), Devon Record Office, Z 13/6/9.
5. Irvin Ehrenpreis, Swift. The Man, His Works, and the Age, 3 vols. (London:
Methuen, 1962–83), vol. iii, pp. 479–85. For another version of the meeting, see
John Lyon, “Materials for a Life of Dr. Swift,” annotations in John Hawksworth’s
Life of Swift (University of Pennsylvania MS., Codex 628).
6. RASP 72/1, 72/14, 72/72, 77/132.
7. RASP 64/64, 67/28, 69/36 (Southcott to James III, 20 September 1723, where he
writes: “mr walpole is going on with his design to extirpate the roman catholicks
out of the three kingdoms”).
8. Tone Sundt Urstad, Robert Walpole’s Poets (Newark: University of Delaware
Press, 1999). Though Young praised Walpole, he can hardly be reckoned one of
his regular supporters.
9. See, for example, Devon Record Office: 49/12/1/23 (19 June 1727), and North
Devon Record Office: 2239B/ add 8/86 (3 November 1729).
10. Life, pp. 185–6; John Gay, Poetry and Prose, ed. Vinton A. Dearing and Charles
E. Beckwith, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1974), vol. i, p. 259.
11. Cambridge University Library, Ch. (H) MSS. 2318.
12. Cambridge University Library, Ch. (H) MSS. 2916; Ch. (H) MSS. 2925.
13. Isle of Wight Record Office, Newport: Convocation Book (45 16 b), 1659–1760.
On the matter of dinners, see Cambridge University Library, Ch. (H) MSS. 57.
14. Swift Corr, iii, p. 326; Richard Savage, A Collection of Pieces Publish’d on
Occasion of the Dunciad (1732), p. vi.

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15. Bertrand A. Goldgar, Walpole and the Wits (Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press, 1976), pp. 77–8.
16. The fullest account of this strange episode is in Ian Jack, The Poet and his Audi-
ence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 42–5.
17. Devon Record Office, 49/12/1/23.
18. On this the most recent treatment is Eveline Cruickshanks and Howard Erskine-
Hill, The Atterbury Plot (London: Palgrave, 2004). See particularly in this regard
Chapters 6–9.

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 11
PA U L B A I N E S

Crime and punishment

Poetry and punishment in the early works

Punishment was more physical, and more visible, in Pope’s day than it is in
ours. The pillory was still in use at various locations around London, as were
public whippings. Eight times a year those condemned to death were taken
from Newgate Prison to Tyburn to be hanged: crowds lined the route and
gathered for the show. Crime and punishment spawned their own literature,
and Pope’s lifetime coincided with an explosion in crime-related writing of
all kinds. “Proceedings” at the Old Bailey were published regularly from
the 1680s. Trials and punishments were widely reported in the newspapers;
criminal biography (in both documentary and fictional forms) flourished.
On the other side, as it were, there was considerable professional crossover
between law and writing: many writers were educated at the Inns of Court,
including such notable friends of Pope as Congreve, Rowe, and Warburton.
Pope was friendly with several lawyers; one of them was celebrated in “Pre-
sentation Verses to Nathaniel Pigott,” and another, William Murray, later
the Earl of Mansfield, was the addressee of the Sixth Epistle of the First Book
of Horace Imitated.
Owen Ruffhead, Pope’s first official biographer and himself a barrister,
declared that Pope intended his work as a “supplement to the public laws,”
and the metaphorical “lash” of satire was regularly invoked as his model.
But Pope’s attitude to crime and the law was actually much more complex
than this. In an early letter to Henry Cromwell (1 November 1708 [Corr, i,
pp. 51–2]), Pope jokingly compared his entry into print to a public execution,
and likened Tonson’s Miscellanies to the regular collections of malefactors’
lives put out by the Ordinary (Chaplain) of Newgate. In the preface to his
Works of 1717, he asks “that my youth may be made (as it never fails
to be in Executions) a case of compassion” (Prose, i, p. 295). The early
works themselves often show considerable tolerance towards transgressors,
especially female sexual delinquents such as Sapho and the two women (May

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and the Wife of Bath) updated from Chaucer. Eloisa’s motto is “Curse on
all laws but those which love has made!” (74; TE, ii, p. 325) and there is
for her, and for the poem, always something sexy in the offence: “I view my
crime, but kindle at the view” (185; TE, ii, p. 335).
Pope can, moreover, position himself as a kind of superior magistrate,
acting outside the limited ethics of the law: his “unfortunate lady” is a brave
violator of oppressive laws, and indeed a virtuous suicide (then itself still a
criminal act); the poet denounces “sudden vengeance” (under the disposition
of “eternal justice”) against her persecutors (35–7; TE, ii, p. 365). The Rape
of the Lock presents a sublimated form of sex crime that requires restitution;
Pope’s chilling couplet

The hungry Judges soon the Sentence sign,

And Wretches hang that Jury-men may Dine.
(iii. 21–2; TE, ii, p. 170)

is sometimes taken as out of kilter with the palliative tone of the poem, but
it reminds us not only that Pope was skeptical about the operations of the
ordinary judicial system, but that this is a narrative with an offender and a
victim who seeks redress. Jove’s golden scales (v.71–2; TE, ii, p. 206) are
emblems not only of fate, but of justice.1 Though Belinda wins the case, her
lock is never restored, and Pope offers her compensation in the form of the
poem itself.
The Essay on Criticism brings rules and writing together in a different
way. Criticism (from , to judge – or accuse) enacts a kind of social
judgement. It is not only worse to judge badly than to write badly, it is “more
dangerous . . . to the public” (TE, i, p. 237). The ideal critic is Longinus, “An
ardent Judge, who Zealous in his Trust, | With Warmth gives Sentence, yet is
always Just” (677–8; TE, i, p. 316). Because of contemporary respect for the
“rules,” these metaphors are capable of much extension. Pope’s sympathy
as a writer is (cautiously) with rule-breakers, and he advises writers as if he
were their advocate:

But tho’ the Ancients thus their Rules invade,

(As Kings dispense with Laws Themselves have made)
Moderns, beware! Or if you must offend
Against the Precept, ne’er transgress its End,
Let it be seldom, and compell’d by Need,
And have, at least, Their Precedent to plead.
The Critick else proceeds without Remorse,
Seizes your Fame, and puts his Laws in force.
(161–8; TE, i, p. 259)

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The “plea” of necessity, which Pope italicizes here, was a staple defense in
court for criminal offenses, while the critic figures as a sort of implacable
policeman. There are, however, particular offenses (blasphemy, obscenity),
where the critic (now positioned as the addressee in place of the writer)
should behave like an angry magistrate: “Discharge that Rage on more Pro-
voking Crimes, | Nor fear a Dearth in these Flagitious Times” (528–9; TE,
i, p. 297).

The Dunciad as pillory

One obscene blasphemer was the rogue bookseller Edmund Curll, who in
1716 published a small anthology of poems variously ascribed to Pope, Gay
and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Not only did Pope slip Curll an emetic
by way of punishment, he wrote the results up in a pamphlet which shows
how adeptly he could imbibe the tone of criminal literature: A Full and True
Account of a Horrid and Barbarous Revenge by Poison, on the Body of
Mr. Edmund Curll, Bookseller (1716) affects to depict Curll as the victim of
Pope’s crime, while actually glorying in an act of revenge, itself technically
transgressive (Prose, i, pp. 257–66).
This amalgam of high juridical pomp and low vendetta underlies The
Dunciad, a poem shaped in part by the war with Curl. Pope has the law on
people, but only in his own way. He is quite explicit about the relationship
between his satire and legal enforcement: The Dunciad is a vast pillory, one
that lasts longer than an uncomfortable hour at Charing Cross. If “Law can
pronounce judgment only on open Facts” then for secret offenses “there is
no publick punishment left, but what a good writer inflicts” (“Letter to the
Publisher,” TE, v, p. 14). Explaining why mini-biographies of the persons
of the poem are appended in the notes, Pope writes:

If a word or two more are added upon the chief Offenders; ’tis only as a paper
pinn’d upon the breast, to mark the Enormities for which they suffer’d; lest the
Correction only should be remember’d, and the Crime forgotten.
(“Advertisement”; TE, v, p. 9)

An appearance in the poem is the punitive moment (we speak of writers being
“put in” the poem, as into the pillory): the explanatory note is the equivalent
of the note of offences sometimes pinned to the body of the pilloried criminal.
Hence the importance of using individual names in the poem – though these
are often slightly mangled for further punitive effect. The crimes that Pope is
punishing here consist, ostensibly, of slander against him and his friends, but
the True Crime is the anonymity afforded by the popular press. Scriblerus
explains:

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they would forthwith publish slanders unpunish’d, the authors being

anonymous; nay the immediate publishers thereof lay sculking under the wings
of an Act of Parliament, assuredly intended for better purposes.
(“Martinus Scriblerus of the Poem”; TE, v, p. 49)2

Having identified the Dunces as a group of malevolent writers operating on

the fringes of legality, Pope dismisses the objection that they are too poor for
satire: while poverty “might be pleaded as an excuse at the Old Baily for lesser
crimes than defamation, for ’tis the case of almost all who are try’d there,” it
is the “just subject of satyre” when it is the “consequence of vice, prodigality,
or neglect of one’s lawful calling; for then it increases the publick burden,
fills the streets and high-ways with Robbers, and the garrets with Clippers,
Coiners, and Weekly Journalists” (“A Letter to the Publisher”; TE, v,
p. 15). The deft alignment of journalists with the circulators of false coin
(they simply make up the slanderous stuff that passes current) shows Pope
keen to insinuate a criminal culture for these anonymous individuals to thrive
in. His “evidence” consists of contributions from the Dunces themselves, in
the form of competing “testimonies” or “witnesses,” words which them-
selves suggest a juridical context (TE, v, pp. 23–47). As the poem evolved
through attack and counter-attack, the Dunces themselves provided more
evidence merely by contesting it.
Pope also wants to establish a criminal pattern to the literary capital. It is
from the Grub Street “cave of Poverty and Poetry” that “hymning Tyburn’s
elegiac lay” emerges, Pope reminds us, noting the characteristic cultural
economy: “It is an ancient English custom for the Malefactors to sing a
Psalm at their Execution at Tyburn; and no less customary to print Elegies
on their deaths, at the same time, or before” (i, 39 and n; TE, v, pp. 64–5).
We are reminded that the hero Lewis Theobald trained as an attorney, an
unforgiveable branch of the legal profession in view of Theobald’s role in the
dubious deathbed marriage of Pope’s friend Wycherley and his subsequent
role as Wycherley’s literary executor (i, 190 and n; TE, v, p. 85). Remember-
ing that certain crimes could be pardoned by “benefit of clergy,” which had
come to mean rote learning of the “necking verse” in order to prove literacy,
Pope contends that the standard Grub Street production comes from “less
reading than makes felons ’scape” (i, 235; TE, v, p. 90). Plagiarism, tradi-
tional short-cut of needy poets, is aligned with criminal theft (i, 46 and n;
TE, v, p. 101). Bards are always on the run from bailiffs because debt landed
one in jail (i, 49, ii, 57; TE, v, pp. 66, 105).3 Poets fear for their ears, because
in theory ears could be cut off (in the pillory) for seditious libel (i, 46, ii, 139,
iii, 212; TE, v, pp. 65, 117, 175). The Dunces proceed to the Thames via
Bridewell prison, “As morning-pray’r and flagellation end” (ii, 258; TE, v,

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p. 133); Pope locates the mud-diving context by means of a trademark syllep-

sis (a characteristic linkage of two verbs with one subject), that sharply
catches the incongruous play-off between high penitence and low punish-
ment in the state’s reformatory regimen.
The pillory was designed to shame offenders and subject them to any kind
of abuse the public cared to shower them with (rotten eggs being the most
notorious); such bathetic physicality afforded many comic opportunities for
Pope to associate his Dunces not only with illegality, but with a filthy, car-
nivalesque violence. Having pilloried his villains, Pope was happy to throw
eggs, in the knowledge that muck sticks. The judicial system had, to help
matters, already prosecuted certain members of the literary profession and
book trade – in particular, Edmund Curll. In listing Curll’s moral transgres-
sions, Pope carefully reminds us that he “was taken notice of by the State,
the Church, and the Law, and received particular marks of distinction from
each” (ii, 54n; TE, v, p. 104). Curll had not only been punished by the vigi-
lante actions of the Westminster scholars, and of Pope himself, but had been
twice reprimanded by the House of Lords for unauthorized publications.
Just a few months before The Dunciad appeared, he had been fined by the
court of King’s Bench for two obscene publications, and sentenced to stand
in the pillory for publishing an anti-Hanoverian memoir. Dulness awards
him a “shaggy Tap’stry” depicting his own fate amidst those of several other
Dunces:

Earless on high, stood un-abash’d Defoe,

And Tutchin flagrant from the scourge, below.
(ii, 139–40; TE, v, pp. 117–18)

Defoe had stood in the pillory in 1703 for writing The Shortest Way with
Dissenters with insufficiently clear irony; Tutchin had been punished under
James II and died after being beaten up in the street in 1707. Curll celebrates
the violence of these encounters as a matter of pride: “what street, what lane,
but knows | Our purgings, pumpings, blanketings and blows?” (ii, 145–6;
TE, v, p. 119); but Pope underscores the extent to which such rough justice
coincided with convictions for actual offences.

“Libels and Satires!”

The Dunciad pillories only one non-literary criminal: John Ward, a corrupt
member of parliament who stood in the pillory for forgery in 1727. Pope had
assisted the Duchess of Buckinghamshire in her legal struggle with Ward,
a former agent of her husband’s, by calling on the services of his friend,

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Lord Harcourt. In the original issue of the poem, near the start of Book
iii Theobald views the “millions and millions” of unborn books, “As thick
as eggs at W–d in Pillory” (III, 26; TE, v, p. 152). Another pilloried writer,
Ned Ward, obligingly complained about this reference, stating that Pope had
been bribed by the Duchess to stir up animosity against Ward while he was
under the punishment, a barbarous stratagem defeated only by the personal
merits of the criminal, which he claimed were sufficient to subdue the rabble.
Thanks to the coincidence of surnames, Pope was enabled to install a smart
link between degraded white-collar crime and Grub Street journalism:

But it is evident this verse cou’d not be meant of him; it being notorious that no
Eggs were thrown at that Gentleman: Perhaps therefore it might be intended
of Mr. Edward Ward the Poet. (iii, 26n; TE, v, p. 152).

The application of juridical satire to non-literary criminals was Pope’s

future direction. In the Epistle to Bathurst Pope established a set of criminal
names to which he would repeatedly return. Wishing to prove that riches
are no marker of goodness, Pope reminds us that they are:

Giv’n to the Fool, the Mad, the Vain, the Evil,

To Ward, to Waters, Chartres, and the Devil.
(19–20; TE, iii.ii, p. 83)

“Ward” is the John Ward of The Dunciad, and his dubious financial progress
up to and beyond the pillory is acidly summarized in a footnote. “Waters”
is Pope’s perverted name for Peter Walter, estate manager and moneylender
who gained a reputation (partly through Pope) for unscrupulous stewardship
of landed estates. Pope claimed he was a “dextrous attorney . . . allowed to
be a good, if not a safe, conveyancer,” implying without actually stating that
Walter sailed very close to the legal wind. The third figure, Francis Charteris,
was a cashiered soldier who had amassed a fortune through gaming and
moneylending. In 1730 he was convicted at the Old Bailey of raping a servant
and sentenced to death, but was pardoned through interest at court. He had
died in 1732 and Pope’s note includes a mock-epitaph by Dr Arbuthnot
celebrating his hideous career. Arbuthnot claims that “having daily deserved
the Gibbet for what he did, | [he] Was at last condemn’d to it for what he
could not do” (TE, iii.ii, p. 86); the contention that Charteris was in fact
impotent enacts a kind of primal castratory revenge under the sanction of
an actual legal condemnation.
Later in the poem, Pope splices the economic and sexual crimes back
together, asking whether riches can give “To Chartres, Vigour; Japhet, Nose
and Ears?” (Bathurst, 88; TE, iii.ii, p. 95). “Japhet” was Japhet Crook,

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convicted of forgery in 1731 and sentenced to lose his ears in the pillory and
have his nose slit (he died in prison a year later). This bizarre ritual, relic
of an already-superseded Elizabethan forgery statute, recommended itself to
Pope’s attention as an example both of extreme psychology (Crook would in
a sense barter bits of his body for gold) and of salutary punishment (which
Pope was happy to exacerbate in the poetry). Once again, the spell in the
pillory is accompanied by a footnote detailing the offense. Pope adds others
to the catalog: Denis Bond, a Director of the “Charitable Corporation for
relief of the industrious poor,” which collapsed in an embezzlement scandal
in 1732 (102; TE, iii.ii, p. 98), and Sir John Blunt, architect of the South Sea
Bubble which ruined many investors in 1720 (135; TE, iii.ii, p. 104).
All these men, with the exception of Walter, had already been punished by
the legal system one way or another: prison, fines, pillory, expulsion from
the House of Commons, bills of pains and penalties. But this is not to say
that Pope was merely seconding the state line. As we have noted already,
Pope evinced much hostility to the way law operated. His ideal economic
figure, the charitable Man of Ross, embodies the humane virtues the villains
lack in his application of wealth, and manages all disputes without recourse
to the courts, rendering “vile Attornies, now an useless race” (274; TE, iii.ii,
p. 116). Law is often a form of contamination. Amongst the fictional exam-
ples, the spendthrift “Young Cotta” bankrupts himself in the service of the
Hanoverians and is abandoned to his fate in debtor’s prison: “His thankless
Country leaves him to her Laws” (218; TE, iii.ii, p. 111). Sir Balaam, another
Whig businessman in the vein of Blunt and Ward, is led into treason by the
gaming habits of his wife:

The House impeach him; Coningsby harangues;

The Court forsake him, and Sir Balaam hangs:
Wife, son, and daughter, Satan, are thy own,
His wealth, yet dearer, forfeit to the Crown:
The Devil and the King divide the prize,
And sad Sir Balaam curses God and dies.
(397–402, TE, iii.ii, pp. 124–5)

The law is followed to the letter, but the forces of law and order (at the
top of which stand the Court and King) hardly come out of the process
looking disinterested; the real moral justice here is Pope’s, and it is charac-
teristically sly. Pope had no time at all for the Coningsby who “harangues”
in Balaam’s trial: he was a virulent anti-Catholic and one of the managers
of the impeachment of Pope’s friend Harley in 1715. Pope is here reveng-
ing himself on ideal Whig types, indeed the whole Hanoverian edifice, using
against itself a system of which, instinctively and politically, he disapproved.

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Bond, Ward, Chartres and the rest remained as push-button figures

throughout the 1730s (occasionally they acquired another partner, such as
Eustace Budgell, the writer strongly suspected of forging a will in 1733).4
Using convicts did not altogether allay the problem that one of the reasons
for Pope’s antipathy to the law was the way it could be used to serve political
ends: as a Catholic he was by definition a kind of outlaw in his own country,
and he had been called as a witness in the show-trial of the Jacobite leader
Francis Atterbury in 1723. There was always the risk that satire would be
deemed libelous under a hostile regime. This risk Pope addressed early on in
his series, in the First Satire of the Second Book of Horace, Imitated (1733).
For Horace’s lawyer-interlocutor, the poet substituted William Fortescue, a
lawyer and court insider who nonetheless maintained a friendship with Pope.
He advised Pope on legal matters, including the war with Curll, which was
increasingly played out under the more straightforward juridical auspices
of the Court of Chancery. Shaking his head at the complaint that his satire
is too bold towards criminals, “Scarce to wise Peter complaisant enough,
| And something said of Chartres much too rough,” Pope approaches “Coun-
cil learned in the Law” for (free) advice (1–10; TE, iv, p. 5). It is a pose,
naturally: Pope sets up a mock-trial between the innocent writer and the pru-
dent lawyer that he is bound to win. Fortescue counsels Pope not to write,
or to write only the safe side. But using the familiar examples, alongside
others, Pope counters that he is ready for any revenge, inside or outside the
law, and states that those “who ’scape the laws” will be always subject to
his satirical challenge. He is a kind of Unmasked Avenger. Fortescue treats
Pope’s proposal as something like a defense speech in court, and has recourse
to legal jargon:
F. Your Plea is good. But still I say, beware!
Laws are explain’d by Men – so have a care.
It stands on record, that in Richard’s Times
A Man was hang’d for very honest Rhymes.
Consult the Statute: quart. I think it is,
Edwardi Sext. or prim. & quint. Eliz:
See Libels, Satires – here you have it – read.
P. Libels and Satires! lawless Things indeed!
But grave Epistles, bringing Vice to light,
Such as a King might read, a Bishop write,
Such as Sir Robert would approve –
F. Indeed?
The Case is alter’d – you may then proceed.
In such a Cause the Plaintiff will be hiss’d,
My Lords the Judges laugh, and you’re dismissed.
(143–57; TE, iv, pp. 19–21)

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Fortescue cannot really think outside the law, or outside the law as it stands
under Walpole; but Pope’s position, while it superficially affects to obey the
law of libel, actually appears to bamboozle the lawyer merely by mentioning
Walpole’s name. Poetry’s rhetoric is superior to the law-speak it encompasses.
This defensive strand often accompanies the offensive stance of the satire,
as if Pope was perennially acting as his own advocate, as well as his own
judge and jury. Arbuthnot privately urged Pope to write more cautiously and
less punitively in satire, but Pope demurred:

General Satire in Times of General Vice has no force, & is no Punishment . . .

tis only by hunting One or two from the Herd that any Examples can be made.
If a man writ all his Life against the Collective Body of the Banditti, or against
Lawyers, would it do the least Good, or lessen the Body? But if some are hung
up, or pilloryed, it may prevent others. (Corr, iii, p. 423)

(The sideways shift from “banditti” to “lawyers” perhaps indicates that

Pope is keeping a comic tinge to his high-minded address.) While literary
satire was supposed to reform people, Pope’s view here is closer to one of
the traditional principles of judicial punishment: deterrence.
These sentiments underlie the public stance of the Epistle to Arbuthnot
(1735), though as with The Dunciad there is considerable private grievance.
In his “Advertisement,” Pope declared “This Paper is a Sort of Bill of Com-
plaint,” giving it the technical term for beginning an action in the court of
Chancery. As in The Dunciad, the libels of others are countered by Popean
autobiography: but non-writers are now arraigned as well. Arbuthnot coun-
sels “No names – be calm – learn prudence of a friend” in the course of the
poem, but Pope will not be silenced: it is the business of satire to tell unpalat-
able truths, and sometimes it is going to sound like punishment. “A Lash
like mine no honest man shall dread” (303; TE, iv, p. 117); only the guilty
need apply. The lash is wielded fairly lightly against the Dunces, who are
back in force – at least, when they can get safely out of the Mint, a debtor’s
refuge from prosecution and thus, Pope implies, the natural home of (other)
poets. Punishment is not the same in all cases. Addison may “give his little
Senate laws” (209; TE, iv, p. 111) but he refuses the responsibilities that
go with power: the lines demolishing him flamboyantly regret the necessity
to exercise chastisement. The lines on the over-powerful patron Bufo, by
contrast, enjoy the comic inflation they inflict (231–49; TE, iv, pp. 112–13).
Others, like Hervey/Sporus, are almost too insubstantial for punishment:
“Who breaks a Butterfly upon a Wheel?” questions Arbuthnot (308; TE, iv,
p. 118), alluding to a method of execution used in France; but Pope elects to
“flap” him at least, accepting the role of satiric executioner in the controlled

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violence of the “Sporus” lines, and embedding his response to the alleged
excess of punishment in the punishment itself (309–33; TE, iv, pp. 118–20)
After such variety, Arbuthnot’s last question is easily answered: satire has
a duty to punish in appropriate ways whatever the crime and whoever the
criminal.

“But why insult the Poor, affront the Great?”

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 Jayl,
A hireling Scribler, 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.
(360–7; TE, iv, p. 122)

The law is politically compromised; satire calls out crime wherever it lurks,
and calls it crime whether or not it has been identified as such by the mech-
anisms of the state.

The “edge of Law”

Despite the awesome dexterity of these lines, it was a troubled position, and
one continually open to the challenge of Pope’s enemies, who scorned such
arrogation of power, especially in one effectively disenfranchised under anti-
Catholic legislation. In 1738 Pope returned to self-defense in the two dialogs
later known as the Epilogue to the Satires. In the first, Pope lists his favourite
criminal targets and berates the world for admiring “Crimes that scape, or
triumph o’er the Law” (168; TE, iv, p. 309). The second has the interlocutor
warn Pope that Nicholas Paxton (treasury solicitor and Walpole’s agent in
identifying seditious publications) will find Pope’s satire libelous. He advises
that Pope stop using individual names, reaching once more for the criminal
comparison:

Yet none but you by Name the Guilty lash;

Ev’n Guthry saves half Newgate by a Dash.
(10–11; TE, iv, p. 313)

James Guthrie was Ordinary of Newgate, “who publishes the memoirs of

the Malefactors,” sometimes with names replaced by dashes. Pope offends
a judicial prudence which would rule out all targets except convicts like the
notorious thief-catcher and receiver of stolen goods Jonathan Wild:

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Fr. Yes, strike that Wild, I’ll justify the blow.

P. Strike? why the man was hang’d ten years ago:
Who now that obsolete Example fears?
Ev’n Peter trembles only for his Ears.
(54–7; TE, iv, p. 315)

Pope notes that Peter Walter had, “the year before this, narrowly escaped the
Pillory for forgery: and got off with a severe rebuke only from the bench”
– an allegation not corroborated, but a significant hardening of Pope’s own
punitive line, even as the villain appears about to escape.
At times Pope aligns his position as satiric enforcer with the traditional
rights of communal punishment around the pillory:
And must no Egg in Japhet’s Face be thrown,
Because the Deed he forg’d was not my own?
(189–90; TE, iv, p. 324)

But in the end – or what seems to be the end – Pope declaims from the highest
possible moral ground, that of a precipice:
Yes, the last Pen for Freedom let me draw,
When Truth stands trembling on the edge of Law.
(248–9; TE, iv, p. 327)

On this brink he laid down the attempt to present poetry as the highest of all
tribunals, citing the actual power of his opponents as a reason to desist. A
further poem, the unfinished “1740,” was written partly in code, apparently
in fear of censorship. Yet the analogy between satire and punishment, which
had offered Pope such imaginative richness and rhetorical power, was not
quite done. In the final version of The Dunciad, Pope leaves Dulness holding
court, a mocking combination of royal levee and court of appeal from which
no one escapes – except perhaps the poet who (at risk of prosecution) frames
the scene.

NOTES
1. As in Pope’s Messiah: “All Crimes shall cease, and ancient Fraud shall fail;
| Returning Justice lift aloft her Scale” (17–18; TE, i, p. 114). Windsor-Forest
(1713) is another text that demonstrates much animus against the abuse of legal
power.
2. Pope refers to legislation requiring all pamphlets to carry the name and address
of the figure responsible for publication, a stipulation widely evaded.
3. The “Index” jokingly confirms this: TE, v, p. 240.
4. See for example Arbuthnot, 378–9 and note; TE, iv, pp. 124–5.

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 12
MALCOLM KELSALL

Landscapes and estates

Pope had a key role in the development and the interpretation of the land-
scape garden and the country-house estate in the eighteenth century. He has
been seen as one of the last Renaissance humanists for whom both the gar-
den and all Nature were speaking pictures, emblems which the humanist
used to convey moral meanings.1 He has been interpreted also as one of
the first Romantics, a fundamental influence on the development of the late
eighteenth-century picturesque garden.2 His association with the landed aris-
tocracy led him to co-operate with them in the planning of their demesnes
and he made of his own villa and garden at Twickenham, near London, an
emblem of his personal principles, horticultural, ethical, and political. His
expression of these principles in his writings, when read empathetically, set
the highest standards of taste and morality for his society.3 On the other
hand, the whole landscape movement with which he is associated, when
read unsympathetically, has been criticized as exploitative and a mystifica-
tion of power.4 Seen from this viewpoint, Pope was a lackey of the rich and
an apologist for the dark side of British imperialism.
Such diversity of interpretation is indicative of the complexity of the sub-
ject and the variation which comes from changing one’s viewpoint. The
tensions between these readings suggest, perhaps, that there may have been
similar tensions (ambiguities, even contradictions) in Pope’s personal posi-
tions in relation to his society. This is a possibility which will be developed
in this essay. It will be claimed, ultimately, that there emerges from these
tensions an element of visionary radicalism in Pope’s iconology which trans-
cends the limitations of the historical moment.

Pope’s villa at Twickenham

First a few matters of fact. Pope’s early taste in landscape was shaped by the
rural scenery of Binfield in Berkshire, where he grew up. The family came
within the circle of patronage of Lord Burlington who was instrumental in the

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revival of the classical style of the Roman Augustan theorist, Vitruvius, and
his disciples, the Venetian Andrea Palladio (1508–80) and the architect of the
early Stuart court, Inigo Jones (1573–1652). Burlington’s villa and gardens
at Chiswick, west of London, were models for Pope when he came to lease,
and develop, his own villa nearby at Twickenham after 1718. Pope’s gardens
became a show-place and the exterior of the villa, seen from the Thames, was
frequently portrayed, although access to the interior was a privilege reserved
for personal friends. John Serle, Pope’s gardener, produced a guidebook.
Pope’s increasing hostility to the Hanoverian monarchy and especially to
the government of the First Minister, Sir Robert Walpole, drew him pro-
gressively into opposition politics and many of the great estates within the
circle of his acquaintance can be associated with those alienated from the
regime: Lord Peterborough at Bevis Mount, Lord Bathurst at Cirencester
Park and Riskins, Viscount Bolingbroke at Dawley Farm, Viscount Cob-
ham’s “patriot” circle at Stowe, and, more generally, Ralph Allen at Prior
Park, Mrs Henrietta Howard at Marble Hill, and the Digby family at Sher-
borne Castle.
Gardens are transitory things. Pope’s home at Twickenham was demol-
ished in 1807. There remain only traces of his grotto, reduced to the subter-
ranean passage which Samuel Johnson mocked in his life of Pope (Johnson,
LOP, iii, pp. 134–5). Elsewhere the landscape has become a palimpsest, as at
Stowe, the garden which Pope knew overlaid by generations of subsequent
development. Even when the original remains, for instance the great woods
of Cirencester, Nature does not remain the same. Trees take generations to
grow, more transient vegetation disappears; remove the gardener’s hand and,
as Milton wrote, even Paradise grows wild. Nor do Pope’s own generaliza-
tions about his ideal forms of garden convey precise information. We do not
have a seedsman’s catalogue for Twickenham, nor an equivalent of a planting
plan, only some gnomic statements to consider “the genius of the place,” to
make a garden like a painting or to order contrast, to surprise and to conceal
the boundaries (Anecdotes, i, pp. 252–4) – advice repeated in the Epistle to
Burlington, lines 47–70, with the additional injunction to “call the country
in.” We know he disliked topiary work (Guardian, no.173; Prose, i, pp.
148–51) and the excessive formality displayed in Timon’s garden (Burling-
ton, 99–176). Such views, however, might fit numerous scenarios, “classic,”
“picturesque” or “romantic.” Twickenham itself had some kind of transi-
tional role between the old “formal” and the new “landscape” garden,5 but
the terminology of description and the historical evidence are imprecise.
Nonetheless, a would-be definitive iconography of Twickenham was cre-
ated for the contemporary public. Consider, for example, Nathaniel Parr’s
engraving after Peter Andreas Rysbrack, 1735 (Figure 3). Pope is depicted

162
Figure 3. Pope’s villa at Twickenham, after the painting by Peter Andreas Rysbrack, engraved by Nathaniel Parr (1735)
 m a l c o l m k e l sa l l

standing with his dog, Bounce, at what appears to be the entrance to his villa,
but what is, in fact, the entrance to his grotto which led (under the Hampton
road) to his garden beyond. As an act of especial courtesy Pope has gone
out to meet his visitors who have arrived on the Thames. The façade of the
villa has been ornamented with a neo-Palladian portico in imitation of Lord
Burlington’s Chiswick. This was a compliment to Burlington’s taste and a
sign of Pope’s allegiance to the “villa culture” of the ancients (Cicero’s Tus-
culum or the younger Pliny’s Laurentum). The lawn and boundary hedge are
“formally” cut; behind the villa the maturing trees grow in “natural” pro-
fusion. Against the villa’s wall the frames indicate the practical development
of horticulture.
The subsequent inscription is promiscuously drawn from the Imitations
of Horace:

Know, all the distant din the World can keep

Rolls o’er my Grotto, and but Sooths my Sleep.
Content with Little, I can piddle here
On Broccoli and Mutton round the year;
But ancient Friends (tho’ poor or out of play)
That touch my Bell, I cannot turn away.
’Tis true, no Turbots dignify my boards,
But Gudgeons, Flounders what my Thames affords:
To Hounslow-Heath I point, and Banstead Down;
Thence comes your Mutton, & these Chicks my own:
From yon old Walnut Tree a Show’r shall fall;
And Grapes long-lingring on my only Wall,
And Figs from Standard and Espalier join:
The Devil’s in you if you cannot dine.
Then chearful healths (your Mistres’s shall have place)
And what’s more rare, a Poet shall say Grace.
A. Pope

The obvious emphasis is on retirement from “the World” (meaning the social,
political, and business world of the new Rome, London); on hospitality and
friendship (without regard to wealth or status); and on the self-sufficient
and simple (non-luxurious) productivity of the garden/estate (dapes inemtas:
unbought feasts) rather than the way of the world of Rome/London (omnia
Romae/ Cum pretio: all things at Rome have their [high] price). These are
standard classical motifs and were unexceptional commonplaces of “villa
culture.”6
Two things, however, may strike a modern reader as odd. The first is the
emphasis on poverty and upon the “little” on which one may “piddle” here.
Although Pope began with an artisan’s dwelling, nonetheless the construction

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of a four-storey villa (with five acres of ground) was neither cheap nor small,
then or now. Considered in abstract, philosophical terms, Pope is alluding to
the philosophical “mean” between, for instance, the contemporary grandi-
loquence of Marlborough’s Blenheim Palace or Walpole’s Houghton Hall,
and the poverty of the wind-chilled attic of a Grub Street hack. But there is a
politics to that “mean.” “The ancient Friends (tho’ poor or out of play)” in
the Imitations are “Chiefs, out of War, and Statesmen out of Place” (Sat, ii.i,
126): men like Peterborough or the attainted Bolingbroke. These “ancient”
friends constitute the opposition to the “world” of modern London.
The second oddity is the synecdoche by which “my Grotto” stands for
the estate. The extended passageway contained both a virtuoso’s collection
of minerals and the materials of an actual mine. Architecturally, it is an
equivalent to the “rustication” of the lower floor of great houses, the domain
of “Nature” (and of servants/slaves) from which architectural form arose.
Aesthetically, the grotto is a commonplace of humanistic garden tradition
derived from the ancients, manifest in the Renaissance palaces of Italy and
France, and which may still be seen in England at Woburn and Stourhead. For
Pope, however, the opposition between “the World” and “the grotto” seems
to have acquired psychological associations. William Kent (garden designer
and friend) depicted Pope, in a phantasmagorical sketch, as an inspired poet
composing in the grotto, and Pope himself wrote of it as a camera obscura,
a place into which external images are projected, as if it were the mind itself.
Or, closed to the world, it became another world of self-reflexive mirrors,
lit only by its own internal illumination. Maynard Mack has interpreted the
grotto, therefore, as combining both the mirror of memory with the lamp of
creative imagination.7
Contemporary verses, collected in John Serle’s plan of the estate, cele-
brated the grotto as a sacred place, a shrine of true patriot virtue, and, as
Pope claimed, a poetic mine uncorrupted by the lust for gold. Deeper histor-
ical tradition associated classical grottoes with prophetic caves and with the
nymph Egeria, who taught wisdom to Numa, an early Roman king. Christian
iconography appropriated the grotto as a religious site, even the birthplace
of Christ. Pope would have been aware of the religious overtones, although
it is uncertain whether he, or later Catholic incumbents, embellished the site
with the icons of the crown of thorns and the five wounds of Christ. But “A.
Pope” was a man not ashamed of his (persecuted) faith. Much depends upon
the ambiguous Horatian motto he inscribed on the private (inner garden) side
of the grotto: Secretum iter et fallentis semita vitae (Ep, i.xviii, 103). One
might render this innocuously, with Mack, as “a secluded journey along the
pathway of life unnoticed,” or, provocatively, using Abraham Cowley’s idea
of the “innocent deceiver” (Essays in Verse and Prose, 1668) as “a secret

165
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journey through a straight gate by an innocent deceiver.” Catholicism was

notorious for its “equivocations” by which the faithful survived.
Thus, the meanings which may be derived from the grotto depend upon
a range of associations. In this respect it is the richest emblematic site on
Pope’s miniaturized estate. How far we should extend the associations is
uncertain, and the same uncertainty extends to the main garden beyond.
Serle’s plan shows an extended lawn and bowling green (there is no “formal”
parterre). These are entered from the grotto and set with regular alleys of
trees dissolving into “wildernesses” traversed by pathways offering diverse
views of the garden and its architectural ornaments (Figure 4). There is also
a kitchen garden, an orangery, and a vineyard. The whole offers an Horatian
mixture of the utile et dulce, the useful and the pleasant (Ars Poetica, 343).
What further significations might be read into the garden? Serle records
three “mounts” and a temple of shells, the latter whimsically sketched by
Kent with the pagan deities descending on a watery rainbow. The climactic
feature of the garden was (ultimately) an obelisk dedicated to the memory
of Pope’s mother, matrum optima, best of mothers, which was raised in a
narrowing cypress grove which, by optical illusion, seemed to extend the
garden, like a vista in Palladio’s Teatro Olympico in Vicenza. Perhaps the
shell temple alludes back to the grotto and to “the great chain of being” in
which mineral substance becomes living form; perhaps the mounts are both
viewpoints and allusions to the lost mount of paradise (paradeisos originally
meant a garden in Greek). One is on more definite ground in reading the
obelisk both as a sign of the transitoriness of life, of the immortality of the
soul, and of Pope’s pietas, his (Christian) reverence for his parents. But there
is a more provocative reading of the garden.8 Pope had written about con-
structing a cathedral from trees, and Serle’s diagram resembles the floor plan
of a Palladian church (hence Roman Catholic) with columnar aisles, central
dome, and either lady chapel or high altar marked by the obelisk. Matrum
optima may allude to another mother, blessed among women. Catholics were
forbidden to erect places of worship, but here A. Pope has built his church
to Nature’s God. If so, here is a hidden sign, fallentis semita vitae. Perhaps –
but John Rocque’s map (1746) shows a curvilinear, not rectangular, site.
To emphasize the elements of moral allegory in the Popeian landscape is
not to deny the keen sensitivity of his eye for natural beauty. It was this
exquisite sensibility which led his friends to value his contribution to the
planning of greater demesnes. But, in this kind of co-operation, Pope’s spe-
cific contribution is absorbed into a complex (and irretrievable) interplay
between the poet, the taste (and financial resources) of great patrons, and
the work of professional landscape gardeners such as Charles Bridgeman
and Kent. What is unique, in Pope, is the moral expression of his obsession

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Figure 4. A plan of Pope’s garden at Twickenham by John Serle, his gardener (1745)
 m a l c o l m k e l sa l l

with the meanings of the interaction between man and estate, the “use of
riches” to restore the (lost) paradise of Nature and to move human society
closer towards ideal form.

The estates of the rich

Pope’s two major poems on “the use of riches” in making and managing
great estates are the Epistles to Burlington (1731) and to Bathurst (1732).
Possibly another poem, “Dawley Farm” is by Pope. It is a panegyric on Bol-
ingbroke and his estate, but the addressee was so controversial politically
that the author remained anonymous. Neither of the two authentic Epis-
tles praises his friends’ estates. There is no formal panegyric of Chiswick
House, Villa and garden, nor of Cirencester Park. Pope goes no further
than to praise Burlington’s “taste” in architecture (compared with imitating
fools), to commend those who plant like Bathurst and who build like Boyle
(Burlington, 178), or, by implication, to link them to a model landlord whose
tenants “owe” more to him than to the soil (Burlington, 184), an ambigu-
ous commendation, as is the claim that Bathurst is “yet unspoil’d by wealth”
(Bathurst, 226). One need only compare traditional English “country house”
poetry to perceive what is not there in Pope. The convention was one of
exemplary panegyric of great houses and estates. Classical culture blends
with feudal traditions of organic hierarchy: witness, from the seventeenth
century, Ben Jonson’s To Penshurst, Thomas Carew’s To Saxham, Andrew
Marvell’s Upon Appleton House, Robert Herrick on Rushden, Charles Cot-
ton on Chatsworth. But for Pope the exemplary estate is his own five acres
at Twickenham, a model landholding equivalent to the few acres of King
Alcinous in Pope’s Odyssey, vii, 142–75. Now a linen-draper’s son provides
the touchstone of moral worth.
This is a major disruption of tradition, therefore, whether one takes as
paragons of “villa culture” Cicero or Pliny from antiquity, or Lorenzo the
Magnificent, or the Duke of Devonshire, or a Burlington from the modern
world. This disruption gives particular significance to Pope’s choice of the
Roman poet Horace as his alter ego. Horace, like Pope, was of modest origins
(he was the son of a freed slave). He had fought in civil war in defense of the
republic and lost (at the battle of Philippi) just as Pope’s co-religionists had
been crushed by William III’s “thundring arm” in the civil war of the 1690s.
Horace made peace with victorious Caesar Augustus and, like Pope, became
a spokesman for so-called Augustan virtues. He was rewarded with a farm
in Sabine territory. Pope, on the other hand, more provocatively, declared
his independence from the kind of patronage which Horace enjoyed:

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. . . (thanks to Homer) since I live and thrive,

Indebted to no Prince or Peer alive.
(Ep, ii.ii, 68–9)

He alludes to the humanistic tradition embodied in the founding father of

European poetry, and he celebrates also the material property he has earned
by poetry and which gives him his liberty. It is this which enables him to
make his personal declaration of independence: “Unplac’d, unpension’d, no
Man’s Heir or Slave” (Sat, ii.i, 116). It may seem tendentious to link Pope to
the American Declaration of 4 July 1776, but the country-house gentry of the
American revolution (men like George Washington of Mount Vernon and
Thomas Jefferson of Monticello) drew inspiration from the discourse of the
English opposition to the corruption, tending to “tyranny”, of the monarcho-
aristocratical system of the Hanoverian regime. Pope was the major poetic
voice of that opposition.
Both of Pope’s Epistles on “the use of riches” are ferocious attacks on
the misuse of wealth, but paradoxically (and protectively and provocatively)
addressed to two of the wealthiest men in the country. The corruption he
depicts is extreme. From the Court downwards the aristocracy is debauched
by the pursuit of power, place and pecuniary greed, poxed by promiscuity,
a High Society of pimps and gamesters, flatterers and fools. The economic
order of the City is a prey to the unregulated excesses of capitalist speculation.
The entire culture is indifferent to the exploitation of the poor; while the rich
riot, the laborer starves (Bathurst, 24). The paradox of Pope’s position is that
he is both a personal friend of landed aristocrats, and yet a virulent critic
of the misappropriated and misapplied wealth of the powerhouses which
controlled the realm. “Timon,” the notorious archetype in the Epistle to
Burlington, is not a mere individual, but representative: “A hundred smart
in Timon” (Sat, ii.i, 42). If the Epistle to Burlington had been written in
the 1790s, one would call Timon’s villa (or Cotta’s inhospitable “hall” in
Bathurst) examples of the ancien régime. Even Pope’s friendship with the
great might not have protected him from prosecution for the “Jacobinical”
implications of his attack on the powers that were. The “radical” and the
dangerously “constructive tendency” of the satire would be apparent. Which
is not to suggest that his praise for his great friends is insincere. In a letter to
Burlington he described Chiswick as “the finest thing this glorious sun has
shin’d on,” and he wrote a glowing account to Martha Blount of the Digbys’
estate at Sherborne. (Corr, iii, pp. 313–14; ii, pp. 236–9) Consider, on the
other hand, his moralization in public verse of the tentacular extension of
Bathurst’s planting at Cirencester:

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All vast Possessions (just the same the case

Whether you call them Villa, Park or Chase)
Alas, my Bathurst! what will they avail?
Join Cotswold Hills to Saperton’s fair Dale,
Let rising Granaries and Temples here,
There mingled Farms and Pyramids appear,
Link Towns to Towns with Avenues of Oak,
Enclose whole Downs in Walls, ’tis all a joke!
Inexorable Death shall level all,
And Trees, and Stones, and Farms, and Farmer Fall.
(Ep, ii.ii, 254–63)

The emphasis is ethical, on the vanity of grandeur, but the lines might be
construed also as (gentle) mockery of Bathurst’s “taste” in mingling woods
and pyramids, granaries and temples, and the gigantic (Brobdingnagian)
linking of towns with avenues. (Pope’s correspondence with Bathurst often
mocks the magnitude of these projects and Pope’s Lilliputian status.) Is there
not, as well, a hint of criticism, flickering by implication, of the enclosure
of common land walled in as unproductive park, or restricted “chase”?
Compare the modest utility of Twickenham.
It has been suggested that there is an uncertain demarcation between the
Timonesque tendencies of Pope’s super-rich friends and the Brobdingnagian
Timon.9 If there is clear blue water between, it depends upon nice definitions
of esthetic “taste” and the morality of the “use” of riches. Timon, ostenta-
tiously, is an example of bad taste, and his landscape is a perversion of the
ideal of the ingenium loci, the spirit of the place.10 Timon’s parterre is “a
Down,” his lake “an Ocean”; trees are cut as statues (and statues are thick
as trees). Unnatural formality constrains everything:

Grove nods at grove; each Alley has his brother,

And half the platform just reflects the other.
(117–18)

Compare the ideal of Twickenham. The implication of Pope’s argument is

that bad taste (formal gardening) is indicative of bad morality, whereas good
taste, as shown at Twickenham, Chiswick or Cirencester, coincides with
virtue. Philosophically this has been claimed to be a fundamental tenet of
civic humanism, for the proper practice of the “liberal” arts (cultus: culture/
cultivation) is a sign of the superior viewpoint of the aristocracy empowered
by land to govern.11 But the linkage of taste with virtue is a non sequitur,
as apparent to Henry James in his country-house fiction as to a Marxist
critic. Among the country-house order itself one might turn to Jefferson and
John Adams, who on their English garden tour of 1786 admired the esthetic

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landscape, but condemned the misapplication of aristocratic wealth. Like-

wise, the early chapters of The Absentee (1812) by Maria Edgeworth of
Edgeworthstown House, eviscerate the competitive use of standards of taste
by which the wealthier of the “ins” excluded those they would keep “out”
(and Edgeworth had no use for absentee landlords, of which Burlington had
been a spendthrift example). Taste and power functioned together in the
competitive world of the rich in which Pope was a privileged, but impuis-
sant, visitor.12
Although an historical perspective is necessary to understand Pope’s social
position, it can be reductive of poetry. Something is “far more deeply inter-
fused” into his landscape (Wordsworth, Tintern Abbey [1798], 96). Consider
a typical couplet, expressive of how “Nature” has been forgotten at Timon’s
villa:

Un-water’d see the drooping sea-horse mourn,

And swallows roost in Nilus’ dusty Urn.
(125–6)

This melancholy evocation might come from some Byronic lament on the
ruins of Hadrian’s villa, and there is an extraordinary, almost Keatsian,
beauty of sound and imagery. What the imagination perceives is, as it were,
an emblem of a lost civilization in which no streams of living water flow
(such as Moses and the Man of Ross called forth). Nothing fertilizes this
waste land. For Pope the meaning of the landscape depends upon its relation
to consonant architectural form, and forms are textualized as icons which
become meaningful here from their association with the river of life, the
Nile, and the sea itself into which all waters flow. Timon’s dry fountains are
unnatural, and what is unnatural is contrary to the ideal order of Nature’s
God.

A visionary landscape
The movement of Pope’s imagination is from the historical (Walpole’s
Houghton, Marlborough’s Blenheim) to the archetype (Timon’s villa) to an
implied visionary ideal (the good, which is realized through the imagination).
Our imperfect world is a realm of shadows, but beyond is the realm of light –
to adopt a Platonic image. The third Earl of Shaftesbury is the authoritative
voice on Platonism and the landscape in Pope’s lifetime, but Pope’s English
poetic forefathers, Milton and Spenser, are Platonists also: one the tragic
poet of paradise lost, the other the creator of a chivalric order which exists
only in faerie land, while this world is prey to ineluctable mutability. Beyond
these lie the Platonic gardens of Renaissance humanism where, in an ideal

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landscape, true philosophers enjoy “the Feast of Reason and the Flow of
Soul” (Sat, ii.i, 128), to which one may join the Christian Platonism of St.
Paul. Now we see “as in a glass darkly”; only in God’s kingdom shall we see
the light “face to face”.
In Pope, the ideal belongs to what the Platonist Philip Sidney called the
“golden world” of poetry. It is something which the poet creates, mirroring
a perfect idea, by which the imperfections of this world are found want-
ing. Compare, in Pope’s verse, the ideal of hospitality and friendship at
Twickenham with the “hecatomb” of Timon’s banquet, a hell for the guests
where they find themselves “In plenty starving, tantaliz’d in state” (Burling-
ton, 163); or compare that rarity, a poet saying grace, at Twickenham with
“the Pride of Pray’r” of Timon’s chapel (Burlington, 142). Timon’s vanity
and folly ultimately feed on intellectual ignorance, for his library is noted
for its bindings, not for the contents of the books: “For all his Lordship
knows . . . they are [but] wood” (Burlington, 138). Compare Pope’s verse,
steeped in catholic, humanistic learning. The two modern authors whose
absence from Timon’s collection Pope notes are John Locke, the philosopher
of those rights to life, liberty, and property which the American revolutionary
vision demanded for “the new world” (in the teeth of militant Hanoverian
opposition); and Milton, the poet of Paradise Lost and champion of freedom
of speech and republican liberty.
Timon is, thus, the antitype of the good, the true, and the beautiful, a rep-
resentative of the “Corruption” which like the Biblical “Flood” inundates
Britain (so Pope argues). No means is offered by Pope by which Timon’s cor-
rupt power can be overborne, except by some undefined process of Nature.

Another age shall see the golden Ear

Imbrown the Slope, and nod on the Parterre,
Deep Harvests bury all his pride had plann’d,
And laughing Ceres re-assume the land.
(Burlington, 173–6)

Past and future are imaginatively present here. “Laughing Ceres” recalls the
Virgilian laetas segetes, joyful cornfields, of the Georgics (i, 1): the future
will see the pleasure garden replaced by the culture of the land which reaches
the very walls of the villa. But by what specific means? It is not customary
to link Pope with the visionary tradition in English art, but what else is this
idealization of the future but a vatic prophecy?
Equally vatic is the Augustan ending of the poem which envisages the
Vitruvian “Ideas” of Burlington’s mind calling forth in some undefined future
“Imperial Works.” Three times Pope bids the imperium (the power of gov-
ernment) to build harbors, raise temples, and constrain the “dangerous

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Flood.” It is as if to will were to achieve. A similar aspiration was to inspire

Jefferson envisaging the imperial city of Washington, C.-N. Ledoux’s vision-
ary architecture in France, or Sir John Soane’s (unbuilt) London. This is the
unfulfilled Romanticism of the Enlightenment: “To hope, ’til Hope creates . . .
the thing it contemplates” (Shelley, Prometheus Unbound [1820], 573–4).
What then of the poet piddling at Twickenham? In comparison with the
great, it is apparent that he must be “content with little.” His five acres of
leased land are less even than the (normative) fifty acres of the American
freeholders whom Jefferson saw as “the chosen people of God.” Imitating
Horace’s epode, Beatus ille, Pope wrote:

Happy the man whose wish and care

A few paternal acres bound . . .

But Pope’s idealism is touched by irony. Are men happy when bound to a
few paternal acres? Horace, in the epode, thought not, and Pope neither had
paternal land, nor could he bequeath his five acres. Nor was his “wish and
care” limited by his tiny Elysium. On the contrary, Twickenham was the base
for what he described as his “Heav’n directed” mission to use the “sacred
Weapon” of satire in “Truth’s defence,” and reinterpreting Timon’s pride,
he wrote of himself:

Yes, I am proud; I must be proud to see

Men not afraid of God, afraid of me.
(Epilogue to the Satires, ii, 208–9)

It is a gigantic claim, perhaps only equaled in English satire by Byron’s adop-

tion of the persona of Satan in The Vision of Judgment (1822) to voice a
divine opposition, not unlike Pope’s, to the corruption of the Hanoverian
regime.
Pope’s great friends (out of office) separated themselves from the targets
of his satire by recruiting him into their landscapes as an exponent of their
ideals. There are seats dedicated to Pope at Cirencester and Sherborne, and
most significantly of all, in the ideal world of the great landscape garden
of Stowe, his bust is placed in the quasi-paradisiacal region known as the
“Elysian Fields.” In this golden world of the imagination (a secluded dell)
Pope looks out to a circular mount on which is raised the Temple of Ancient
Virtue. His companions in a shrine of British Worthies are great statesmen,
philosophers, and poets. They include John Hampden, who defied tyranni-
cal taxation (an inspiration to the American revolutionaries) and those two
champions of freedom, whom Pope noted were absent from Timon’s library:
Locke and Milton.

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Looking to the future, one might add to this company men like William
Wordsworth, Samuel Palmer, and William Morris of Kelmscott. Like Pope
and the Renaissance humanists, these visionaries were to find inspiration in
Nature’s “green shade” (Marvell, “The Garden,” 48) and believed that even
in our fallen world, through the idealism of memory and desire, one might
aspire to build Jerusalem in England’s green and pleasant land.

NOTES
1. For major studies in this area, see Further Reading, pp. 237–246 below.
2. Morris R. Brownell, Alexander Pope and the Arts of Georgian England (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1978).
3. Howard Erskine-Hill, The Social Milieu of Alexander Pope: Lives, Example and
the Poetic Response (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975).
4. Raymond Williams, The Country and the City (London: Chatto and Windus,
1973).
5. Peter Martin, Pursuing Innocent Pleasures: The Gardening World of Alexander
Pope (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1984).
6. See J. S. Ackerman, The Villa: Form and Ideology of the Country House (London:
Thames and Hudson, 1990); as well as Horace, Epodes, ii, 48; Juvenal, Satires,
iii, 183–4.
7. Maynard Mack, The Garden and the City: Retirement and Politics in the later
Poetry of Pope (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969), p. 60.
8. Michael Charlesworth, “Alexander Pope’s Garden at Twickenham: An Architec-
tural Design Proposed,” Journal of Garden History 7:1 (1987), pp. 56–68.
9. Malcolm Kelsall, The Great Good Place: The Country House and English
Literature (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993).
10. Terry Comito, “The Humanist Garden,” in The Architecture of Western
Gardens, ed. Monique Moiser and George Tyssot (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
1991), pp. 37–44.
11. John Barrell, “The Public Prospect and the Private View: The Politics of Taste in
Eighteenth-century Britain,” in Reading the Landscape: Country – City – Capital,
ed. Simon Pugh (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990), pp. 19–40.
12. Stephen Bending, “One among the Many: Popular Aesthetics, Polite Culture and
the Country-house Landscape,” in The Georgian Villa: Landscape – Society, ed.
Dana Arnold (Stroud: Sutton, 1998), pp. 61–78.

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 13
C AT H E R I N E I N G R A S S I A

Money

When Alexander Pope recounts the onslaught of impecunious writers who

seek him out at Twickenham, he describes their typical “modest wish” for
“My Friendship, and a Prologue, and ten Pound” (TE, iv, p. 99). That
triad of desires captures the basic types of currency in which Pope regu-
larly traded: professional friendship, literary commodities or words, and,
of course, money. Pope dwells on these currencies in Epistle to Arbuthnot
(1735) because they define the symbolic system of investment and exchange
that shapes his personal and professional relationships, his poetic career,
and his financial activities. These three currencies are deeply imbricated and
mutually reinforcing: as Pope’s professional success increased, aided in part
by an ad hoc system of patronage and his savvy determination to control the
publication of his texts, his financial gains outstripped those of most of his
poetic contemporaries. From the earliest stages of his career, Pope realized
the value of ongoing relationships (sometimes collaborative, sometime adver-
sarial) with his colleagues in the print trade: “A mutual commerce makes
Poetry flourish” (Corr, i, p. 20). By skillfully deploying printed rejoinders,
financial assistance, or well-placed advice, he contributed to his consistent
“fame” in the marketplace and enhanced his ability to control the produc-
tion and distribution of his own texts (and the attendant socio-poetic image).
That control – which ranged from holding the copyrights to his poems to
determining the quality of ink and paper and the appearance of the text
on the page – simultaneously enriched Pope’s poetic persona and his finan-
cial accounts. Pope cultivated his image of the gentleman author, removed
from the concerns of the trade, while he was unapologetically writing for
money. He relished the personal comforts and independence it provided:
“(thanks to Homer) since I live and thrive, | Indebted to no Prince or Peer
alive” (Ep, ii.ii, 68–9; TE, iv, p. 169). That wealth enabled Pope, in turn,
to strategically assist colleagues, and, more importantly, to create a life of
retirement at Twickenham that obscured his dependence on the urban print
marketplace and the new financial systems he decried in his poems. While

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he repeatedly and rather proudly refused any pensions, even those offered
secretly, (“Un-plac’d, un-pension’d, no Man’s Heir, or Slave,” [Sat, ii.i, 116;
TE, iv, p. 17]), he recognized the value of friendly relationships with select
members of the aristocracy which in turn enhanced his marketability and his
prestige.
Pope’s colleagues, like modern critics, often view him as hypocritical in
his attitude toward money, and depict him as mercenary and self-interested.
Indeed, Pope’s relationship with money is complicated and fraught with
ambiguities. How can the wealthiest poet of his day condemn those who
write for money? How can someone who enthusiastically invested in
the South Sea Company and other speculative ventures denounce “paper
credit”? How can the poet who became wealthy by creating his own type
of literary factory when translating Homer represent the commercialization
of the trade in the excoriating terms of The Dunciad? By entering “this idle
trade” (Arbuthnot, 129; TE, iv, p. 105), Pope participated in the three cur-
rencies he identifies and retained an acute awareness of his own financial
situation and the symbolic value with which his culture invested words and
money. Indeed, money – both as real and symbolic currency – profoundly
shaped Pope’s poetic career (thematically and materially), and all his major
poems address, in some measure, financial issues and the use and gain of
riches. He used his poetry and his heavily revised correspondence to dissem-
ble about his own financial experiences, his earnings, and his position within
the print trade.

“this Age of Hope and Golden Mountains”

With this line, Pope captures the spirit of possibility that characterized
early eighteenth-century British culture. Almost contemporaneously with
Pope’s birth in 1688, the economic landscape of England changed dramati-
cally, moving from the traditionally land-based model of wealth to a world
shaped by the possibilities and contingencies of the “paper credit” Pope
describes in Epistle to Bathurst (1733). The financial and concomitant socio-
economic changes that occurred during this period mark a perceived transi-
tion from a culture that, in idealized representations, embodied a devotion to
a patrician ethos of generosity and morality to a financially driven, avaricious
society where “A Man of wealth is dubb’d a Man of worth” (Ep, i.vi, 81;
TE, iv, p. 243). The development of a system of symbolic financial instru-
ments (stocks, lottery tickets, and other forms of speculative investment),
credit-based institutions, and new banking practices (the Bank of England
was established in 1694) that have come to be known as the “financial rev-
olution” emerged in the 1690s and reached an apex with the rise and then

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ultimate collapse of the so-called “South Sea Bubble.”1 The term “paper
credit” suggests the insubstantial and intangible forms of property and nego-
tiable paper circulating in society: lottery tickets, stocks, bills of exchange,
and letters of credit. Paper credit and the mechanisms of speculative invest-
ment shifted the nature of property from material, immovable, and stable
forms such as land to fluid, immaterial, and diffuse symbolic instruments.
The new financial instruments, in many ways, could be realized only imag-
inatively in the sense that individuals received paper, not goods, for their
investment. As was often recounted, the market could rise or fall based on
rumor, suspicion, and the word on the street. A semiotic confusion threat-
ened to erupt as investors attempted to anticipate the market or adjust to
their new-found wealth or loss.
While Pope aggressively critiqued the dangers of “paper credit” (and
money generally) in the Moral Essays, particularly Epistle to Burlington
(1731) and Epistle to Bathurst (1733), before 1720 he, like most of his con-
temporaries, took advantage of the opportunities the new financial instru-
ments afforded when investing both his own money and that of Martha
Blount. (He also gave Lady Mary Wortley Montagu advice on her South
Sea Company investments.) As early as 1716, Pope invested in the South
Sea Company, whose status was favorably affected by the Treaty of Utrecht
celebrated in Windsor-Forest (1713). Depending on the “general Opinion”
and the advice of others, “those whose judgement I myself most depend
upon,” between 1716 and 1720 Pope consistently invested in South Sea
stock. Throughout 1720 he attempted to time the market as he describes to
Martha Blount: “it is thought the South Sea will rather fall than rise . . . and
upon this belief I have myself kept a thousand five hundred pounds lying
by me, to buy at such a juncture . . . I have given orders to buy 500ll for
myself as soon as South Sea falls to 103: which you shall have if you have a
mind to it. It will amount so to near 6 per cent: And my Broker tells me he
thinks it will fall to that” (Corr, i, p. 379). Pope does not want his money
to be “lying dead.” The talk of brokers and inside information bespeaks a
culture where the actions of speculative investment are increasingly natural-
ized. Subsequent letters similarly capture the temper of the age and reveal
Pope’s infatuation with the possibilities presented by speculation:
I daily hear such reports of advantages to be gaind by one project or other in
the Stocks, that my Spirit is Up with double Zeal, in the desires of our trying
to enrich ourselves . . . I hope you have sold the Lottery orders, that the want
of ready mony may be no longer an Impediment to our buying in the Stock . . .
I hear the S. Sea fell since, & should be glad we were in: I also hear there is
considerably to be got by Subscribing to the new African Stock, Pray let us do
something or other, which you judge the fairest Prospect, I am equal as to what

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Stock, so you do but like it. Let but Fortune favor us, & the World will be sure
to admire our Prudence. If we fail, let’s e’en keep the mishap to ourselves; But
tis Ignominious (in this Age of Hope and Golden Mountains) not to Venture.
(Corr, ii, p. 33)

He throws his lot to “Fortuna” and enters the unstable and highly volatile
world of speculative investment. More strikingly, the letter evinces his con-
fidence in nonspecific, unverified information (“I hear”), his desire to invest
regardless of the fund (“let us do something or other”), and his willingness
to abdicate responsibility for the decision (“I am equal as to what Stock, so
you do but like it”) – all characteristics he resoundingly criticized in oth-
ers. At the same time Pope is aggressively and meticulously negotiating the
continued terms for the translation of Homer, he rather insouciantly invests
large sums of money (£1,500) in stock. Howard Erskine-Hill has suggested
that Pope, like other “British papists or Jacobites, living beyond their means
with estates double-taxed, or in jeopardy, or forfeited,” was susceptible to
his friend John Caryll’s encouragement to invest: “the prospect of successful
speculation was perhaps an especially potent and fatal temptation . . . the
point evidently put to the poet must have been what many families in his
position were thinking: hitherto he had always been on the losing side; now
perhaps he could win.”2 That, of course, did not happen. While Pope had
sold some of his stock (at a profit) in July, he was still holding at least £500
worth of stock when the bubble burst in August 1720.
Immediately following the collapse of the bubble, Pope projects a rather
sanguine attitude that belies the renewed financial pressures such a loss cre-
ated for him:

The fate of the South-sea Scheme has much sooner than I expected verify’d
what you told me. Most people thought the time wou’d come, but no man
prepar’d for it . . . Methinks God has punish’d the avaritious as he often
punishes sinners, in their own way, in the very sin itself: the thirst of gain was
their crime, that thirst continued became their punishment and ruin. As for the
few who have the good fortune to remain with half of what they imagined they
had, (among whom is your humble servant) I would have them sensible of their
felicity . . . Indeed the universal poverty, which is the consequence of universal
avarice, and which will fall hardest upon the guiltless and industrious part of
mankind, is truly lamentable. The universal deluge of the S. Sea, contrary to
the old deluge, has drowned all except a few Unrighteous men: but it is some
comfort to me that I am not one of them, even tho’ I were to survive and rule
the world by it. (Corr, ii, p. 53)

In this rather self-serving letter, Pope distinguishes himself from the “unrigh-
teous,” ignoring the pecuniary desires – the “thirst of gain” – that drove him

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in the first place. He had invested with enthusiasm, expressing pleasure at

“adventuring in so good company” (Corr, ii, p. 32), yet he extricates himself
from full blame: he claims not to be among the too “avaritious” who are
doubly punished. Despite his loss, Pope continued to invest throughout his
lifetime, amassing what Colin Nicholson terms a “considerable record of
investment experience.”3
In poetic representations, Pope’s attitude toward speculative investment
becomes markedly less generous, coloured perhaps by both the additional
information related to government involvement in the South Sea Bubble
and his own subsequent financial challenges. John Gay observed that Pope
“engag’d to translate the Odyssey in three years, I believe rather out of a
prospect of Gain than inclination, for I am persuaded he bore his part in the
loss of the South Sea.”4 The stock collapse occurred at the time when Pope
was spending large sums renovating the villa and gardens at Twickenham
where he had moved in 1719, a project that occupied his time, imagination
and money for the following decade.5 The 1720s also marked a period when
he felt the pressure of additional taxes on Catholics. Pope laments to Caryll
how the tax increases will cause him to “lose a good part of my income” and,
“in this expectation,” Pope plans to purchase an advantageous “annuity . . .
to enable me to keep myself that man of honour which I trust in God ever
to be.” (Corr, ii, p. 173). (The larger context for that letter is his attempt to
get back £200 he lent Caryll “as soon as ’tis convenient for you to pay
it.”) Throughout his life, he regularly invested in annuities and later wrote
“So bought an Annual Rent or two. | And liv’d – just as you see I do”
(Ep, i.vii, 71–2; TE, iv, p. 273); indeed, he owned thirty-one shares of the
Sun Fire Insurance Company when he died. Despite his involvement, the
intensity of his language regarding speculative financial activity increased.
The “deluge” of the South Sea Bubble becomes “an ocean of avarice and
corruption” that threatens to drown every aspect of society. By 1723, he
writes “Every valuable, every pleasant thing is sunk in an ocean of avarice and
corruption . . . so money upon money increases, copulates, and multiplies,
and guineas beget guineas in saecula saeculorum.” In this same letter, his
personal assessment is similarly bleak: “My body is sick, my soul is troubled,
my pockets are empty, my time is lost, my trees are withered, my grass is
burned! So ends my history” (Corr, ii, pp. 182–3).

“I could write for my bread”

If Pope realized only limited profits with his South Sea Company investments,
he had marked success in his literary “investments” during a period when
similar opportunities to “venture” presented themselves in the increasingly

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open print trade. The 1690s saw the relaxing of licensing laws which enabled
the nearly exponential expansion of the print trade. While in The Dunciad
(1728, 1729, 1742), Pope specifically satirizes the dangers of the commercial
literary marketplace, he recognizes it also provided a chance for financial
gain and cultural authority otherwise unavailable to a disabled, Catholic
poet. His attacks on authors preoccupied with popularity, frequency of pub-
lication, and profit strategically ignore his own dependence on those same
market forces. The opportunities Pope had in the print trade were multi-
ple and remunerative. Although early in his career he, like most professional
writers, sold his copyright and made limited amounts on each text, he quickly
learned how to negotiate financially advantageous terms. David Foxon esti-
mates that Pope earned at least £5,000 for the Iliad between 1715 and 1720,
and almost that much for the Odyssey (a veritable fortune at a time when
the average laborer earned only £12 per year). Indeed, Foxon marvels at
“the contrast between the 30 guineas or so a year that Pope received in
those early years and the 800 a year or more that the Iliad produced.”6 The
profits of the print trade were particularly welcome during a period when
Pope needed money. He signed an agreement to translate the Iliad within
weeks of the 1714 publication of Rape of the Lock, the very moment his
family’s income had been diminished by a royal edict in France that resulted
in a 25 percent reduction in interest on French annuities. Pope consistently
expresses his concern about lost revenue and the potential for additional
anti-Catholic measures that would restrict his income: “if I had money and
they took it away, I could write for my bread (as much better men than I have
been often suffered to do)” (Corr, i, p. 242). Though Pope was never poor
like the “hacks” he dismisses, he needed a consistent cash flow, especially
after his father’s death in 1717. He had to support his mother. He assumed
considerable financial responsibility for Martha Blount, investing her funds.
And he aspired to create a life of gentlemanly retirement for himself that
definitely required money.
Consequently, when Pope was in the midst of translating the Iliad, he was
also securing subscribers for the volumes, something he always denied doing.
The mechanisms of speculative investment and selling books by subscription
share some structural similarities: both required “investors” to pay for a
product they, initially, could only conceive imaginatively. It enabled the indi-
vidual offering the (literary or financial) stock to secure monies up front with
merely the promise of a return on the investment. Certainly Pope fulfilled his
promise and satisfied his subscribers (even if he swelled his translation to six
volumes to secure the desired profit); yet Pope intuitively recognized that a
poet, like a stockjobber, doesn’t do “real” work or produce a “real” prod-
uct – only words and paper.7 While he solicited subscribers himself, he also

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convinced his friends to work on his behalf (and offered detailed advice
toward their efforts). His letters during this period are filled not with the
process of writing poetry but with the business of selling it. “While I am
engaged in the fight” of translating, he wrote to Caryll, “I find you are con-
cerned how I shall be paid, and are soliciting [for subscribers] with all your
might” (Corr, i, p. 220). A representative letter notes: “You mentioned a
gentleman who was ready to subscribe to you; be pleased to receive the sub-
scription, and let me know his name, which was torn out by the seal of your
letters, that I may transmit him a receipt. Do the same also in regard to my
Lord Cornwallis’s, or any others you may find.” (Corr, i, p. 270). He urges
Caryll to promote the project to an interested buyer “with what speed is
convenient, since I know the danger there is of letting an affair of this nature
cool too much” (Corr, i, p. 204). As with his previous attempt to time the
stock market, he also recognizes the need to “time” the sale of subscriptions.
Much of his urgency in attracting subscribers stems from the financial
arrangements he made for the translation. Pope essentially became his own
publisher, a pattern he continued throughout his career. By usually hold-
ing his own copyrights, dealing directly with a printer, and, in the case
of Homer, selling his texts by subscription, he eliminated the middleman
bookseller. This arrangement tremendously increased his share of the profits
(or the return on the investment of his intellectual capital). It also exposed
him to additional financial risk. Pope was vulnerable to piracies – while the
booksellers typically respected their colleagues’ copyrights, they did not nec-
essarily honor those of a poet like Pope. He also had to remain financially
solvent so he had the money to fund the publishing of his words. He must
essentially speculate on the future value of his own work. In letters, Pope
notes amounts he owes to various publishers for the paper or ink purchased.
Firmly believing that an “An author who is at all the expenses of publishing
ought to clear two thirds of the whole profit into his own pocket,” Pope
calculated the exact amount to be charged for each text. “For instance, as he
explained it,” writes Spence, “in a piece of one thousand copies at 3s each to
the common buyer, the whole sale at that rate will bring in £150. The expense
therefore to the author for printing, paper, publishing, selling and advertis-
ing, should be but £50, and his clear gains should be £100” (Anecdotes, i,
p. 85). Pope also made considered publishing decisions regarding everything
from the appearance of the text on the page or the quality of the paper and
ink, to the size of the volume itself – all decisions designed to increase his
“cultural capital.” The aesthetic value of the material text enhanced Pope’s
poetic image (another commodity) and thus his potential for financial gain.
Pope’s wealth seemed enormous in relation to his colleagues in the print
trade who earned little beyond the initial payment (£10–25) they received

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when they sold their work to a publisher. What is notable about the money is
not only the deliberate way Pope earned it, or the ways he worked to obscure
his strategic financial plans, but what it enabled him to do professionally. He
could secretly hire Elijah Fenton and William Broome (whose collaboration
he subsequently denied) to help him translate Homer; he could set up Robert
Dodsley and Lawton Gilliver as booksellers and then have them distribute his
works; he could offer financial assistance to less successful authors who had
been his enemies (John Dennis) or friends (Richard Savage). He could create
an elaborate series of professional relationships that enabled him to keep
his name in the marketplace, to enhance his poetic image, and to get others
to write about him and his words. The money he accumulated also enabled
him to resist the system of patronage and flattery that seduced many of his
contemporary authors. “South-sea Subscriptions take who please, | Leave
me but Liberty and Ease . . . | Give me, I cry’d, (enough for me) | My Bread,
and Independency!” (Ep, i.vii, 65–6, 69–70; TE, iv, p. 273). He profited in
the print trade through his financial acuity, his skilful negotiations, and, of
course, the marketability of his own newly minted words.

Poetic response
Much of Pope’s poetry, particularly the Moral Epistles and Imitations of
Horace that contribute to the discursive creation of professional friend-
ships, directly addresses the issue of money. As he acknowledges in Epistle
to Bathurst, money is the sine qua non of life – “Useful, I grant, it serves
what life requires” (27; TE, iii.ii, p. 88). No one can ignore its importance:
“A wise man always | . . . makes a diff’rence in his thought | Betwixt a
Guinea and a Groat” (Ep, i.vii, 35–8; TE, iv, p. 271). It has the potential to
command (“It raises Armies in a Nation’s aid”) or to corrupt (“But bribes
a Senate, and the Land’s betrayed,” Epistle to Bathurst, 33–4; TE, iii.ii,
p. 88), help or hurt. Yet increasingly (and inappropriately) money becomes
the sole measure of the man in a culture where new financial instruments
and opportunities for investment create the illusion that one can and should
profit: “. . . to the world, no bugbear is so great, | As want of figure, and a
small Estate” (Ep, i.i, 67–8; TE, iv, p. 283). Pope records an avaricious soci-
ety where individuals will endure “pains of body” and “pangs of soul” to
avoid “the spectre of pale Poverty” (Ep, i.i, 70–1; TE, iv, p. 283); yet no one
suffers to increase virtue or wisdom. The common London advice is “Get
Mony, Mony still! | And then let Virtue follow, if she will” (Ep, i.i, 79–80;
TE, iv, p. 285). The portrait of Sir Balaam in the Epistle to Bathurst enacts
in miniature the dangers Pope sees as systemic. The “plain good man,” the
“religious, punctual, frugal,” Balaam gains tremendous wealth (“Stocks and

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Subscriptions pour on ev’ry side,” [Bathurst, 370; TE, iii.ii, p. 123]), but
loses his faith – “What late he call’d a Blessing, now was Wit, | And God’s
good Providence, a lucky Hit | . . . Seldom at Church (’twas such a busy life)”
(Bathurst, 377–81; TE, iii.ii, pp. 123–4) – and ultimately his life. Seduced
by the trappings of money, he enters a devalued and ultimately oppressive
world; for Balaam, wealth begets death, debt, and loss. Money can realign
social relationships and create another kind of hierarchical confusion with
classes and genders mixing inappropriately: “Statesman and Patriot ply alike
the stocks, | Peeress and Butler share alike the Box” (Bathurst, 141–2; TE,
iii.ii, p. 105). The fashionable activities of “polite” society – cards, opera,
court life – perpetuate that interpretative quagmire that Pope attempts to
correct. Money ushers in linguistic confusion, a corruption of the currency
of words. The cacophony that originates in the City – specifically in Grub
Street and Exchange Alley – infiltrates the Court. Rumor, word of mouth,
and (mis)information that guide the buying and selling of stocks and literary
commodities now become the “modern language of corrupted Peers” and
“this new Court jargon” that advances the wrong advice (Ep, i.i, 98–9; TE,
iv, p. 287).
If the “wrong advice” is troubling, at least it can be heard (even if whis-
pered) and potentially corrected. The loud environs of Grub Street and
Exchange Alley bespeak the compromised nature of their enterprise; the
action is noticeable. Similarly money as coin necessarily draws attention to
itself. As the Epistle to Bathurst makes clear, with “incumber’d Villainy”
of old, corruption is noisy – “the crack’d bag the dropping Guinea spoke,
| . . . gingling down the back-stairs”; “A hundred oxen at your levee roar”
(Bathurst, 36, 66–7, 46; TE, iii.ii, pp. 88–9, 92–3). But the movement from
noise to silence is particularly dangerous. The cultural dullness apocalypti-
cally depicted in The Dunciad is marked by a transition from aural confusion
to silence, darkness, and lacuna. Silent too is paper credit, the pervasive cur-
rency which exists unnoticed and grows unchecked as it “silent sells a King,
or buys a Queen” (Bathurst, 78; TE, iii.ii, p. 93). It reproduces, “copulates,
and multiplies,” giving individuals money they did not “earn”: “While with
the silent growth of ten per Cent, | In Dirt and darkness hundreds stink
content” (Ep, i.i, 132–3; TE, iv, p. 289).
Though poetry may be an “idle trade,” for Pope it is real work that richly
justifies the money he earns. As Samuel Johnson observed “He was one
of those few whose labour is their pleasure.”8 His profits undercut claims
to financial disinterest (“I can be content with a bare saving gain,” [Corr,
i, p. 236]), yet he also describes poetry as a diversion from avarice and
envisages a kind of poetic economy that can assuage the pangs of greed
which threatens to subsume cultural expectations. Words can replace coins

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as a desired currency. Pope envisages the “raging fit” to write that overtakes
so many men actually providing a kind of balm to more dangerous impulses:
“And rarely Av’rice taints the tuneful mind” (Ep, ii.i, 192; TE, iv, p. 211).
Those who “ryme, and scrawl, and scribble” (while they fall into the semiotic
confusion Pope abhors) do not indulge in great mischief; indeed “Sometimes
the Folly benefits mankind” (Ep, ii.i, 188, 191; TE, iv, p. 211). The poetic
economy of words (even if one is just “scribbling”) supplants the material
economy – “The good man heaps up nothing but mere metre” (Ep, ii.i, 198;
TE, iv, p. 211). The profits offered by language compensate for the losses in
the marketplace or for threats of political instability that might result: “Flight
of Cashiers, or Mobs,” the writer will “never mind” (Ep, ii.i, 195; TE, iv,
p. 211). Pope, of course, is a poet and not just a “Man of Rymes” (Ep, ii.i,
341). The palliative effects of the poetic economy are greatly idealized and the
description serves perhaps as a compensatory claim for Pope’s indifference
to money. Certainly one could argue Pope cared primarily for profit and
heaped up meter largely because it enabled him to heap up money. The
poetic economy may be profound for Pope the poet, but largely because it
is inextricably linked to monetary gain for Pope the man. Because of his
carefully achieved wealth, he does not have to become “the bard . . . |
Who rhymed for hire” (Dunciad, iv, 101–2). “He was never reduced to the
necessity of soliciting the sun to shine upon a birthday,” writes Johnson, “of
calling the Graces and Virtues to a wedding, or of saying what multitudes
have said before him. When he could produce nothing new, he was at liberty
to be silent.”9 Because he never offered his words in exchange for money
to one individual, “Above a Patron” (Arbuthnot, 265; TE, iv, p. 114), he
determined the supply and value of his words, set the rate of exchange, and
labeled counterfeit the work of those who did otherwise.

Final accounting
It is difficult to extricate Pope’s personal attitudes toward money from his
discursive representations. A master of dissembling, Pope worked carefully
to obscure the professional acts that provided evidence of inconsistencies
in the poetic persona he created. Thus, in the carefully revised version of
his life, the gentleman author does not grub for subscribers; the poet in
retirement does not fund city booksellers’ shops; the critic of “paper credit”
does not invest speculatively. His professional friendships enabled him to
control the publication of his letters and, through William Warburton, ensure
(for a while) his poetic legacy. His poems strategically ignored his complicity
with the print trade, his experience in the financial marketplace, and his
relentless desire for profit. The contradictions exist on a personal level as well.

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According to Mack, most of Pope’s colleagues regarded him as notoriously

parsimonious, yet his sister insisted “’Tis most certain that nobody ever
loved money so little as my brother.” (Anecdotes, i, p. 156). Samuel Johnson
describes Pope as a man obsessed with money: “it would be hard to find
a man, so well entitled to notice by his wit, that ever delighted so much
in talking of his money . . . [i]n his Letters and in his Poems, his garden
and his grotto, his quincunx and his vines, some hints of his opulence, are
always to be found.”10 Certainly, he was focused on cultivating his five
acres, what Maynard Mack describes as “his miniature Twickenham estate”
(Life, p. 349). The grotto and gardens were a bit of extravagance by his own
description. By contrast, the inventory of his house upon his death suggests
Pope’s frugality in terms of acquiring things: his furniture was extremely
modest and the only real signs of self-indulgence were the fifty-six portraits
he acquired.11 Perhaps it is not avarice but rather pragmatism that prompts
Pope to be of the opinion, “not very uncommon in the world,” as Johnson
observed, “that to want money is to want every thing.”12

NOTES
1. For major works on the financial revolution and the South Sea Bubble, see Further
Reading, pp. 237–246 below. For discussions of the ideological significance of
these financial changes, see amongst others J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian
Moment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974) and Virtue, Commerce,
and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).
2. Howard Erskine-Hill, The Social Milieu of Alexander Pope (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1975), p. 84.
3. Colin Nicholson, Writing and the Rise of Finance (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1994), p. 67.
4. John Gay, Letters, ed. C. F. Burgess (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), p. 43.
5. For a discussion of Twickenham, see Maynard Mack, The Garden and the City
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969).
6. David Foxon, Pope and the Early Eighteenth-Century Book Trade, ed. James
McLaverty (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), p. 39.
7. This aspect of literary authorship produced a larger anxiety for Pope about what
Catherine Gallagher describes as “the minimal materiality inherent in signifying
systems.” See Gallagher, “Raymond Williams and Cultural Studies,” Social Text
30 (1992): p. 87.
8. Johnson, LOP, iii, p .218.
9. Ibid., p. 219.
10. Johnson, LOP, III: 204.
11. Mack, Garden and City, Appendix B, pp. 244–58.
12. Johnson, LOP, iii, p. 219.

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J A M E S M C L AV E R T Y

Pope and the book trade

Introduction
Pope’s absorption in the book trade is remarkable. Always fascinated by
typography, he was commenting on trade practices and condemning some
of them by the time he was thirty. But paradoxically the tricks he observed,
particularly author and bookseller anonymity, serialization, reissues, and
manipulation of formats, all fed positively into the second half of his career,
in which he was, in the modern sense, his own publisher, financing and
designing his own books, and supervising their distribution. Pope made a lot
of money from the publication of his own work – around £10,000 from his
translations of Homer alone – but he also made the book trade his subject
and its resources a means of self-expression. In ways that are characteristic
of him, he seems at times the most unequivocal of insiders, with a detailed
knowledge of contracting, designing, advertising, and distribution, while at
other times, he is merely the bibliographer or book historian, wryly recording
curious practices and displaying them for our disapproval. Complex social
pressures lie behind these stances – a growing public sphere in which repu-
tations were to be earned and maintained, the possibilities of large financial
rewards for writing, the slow replacement of patronage by the market – and
Pope undoubtedly regarded his own times and their changes as hostile to his
success. Ironically, this very awareness became integral to his achievement.

The Jacob Tonsons and William Lewis

Pope made his first appearance in print in Tonson’s Poetical Miscellanies, The
Sixth Part (2 May 1709). It was a distinguished start because Jacob Tonson,
Sr. was the leading London bookseller.1 The surviving invitation suggests the
smoothest of transitions from the private to the public sphere: “I have lately
seen a pastoral of yours in mr. Walsh’s & mr Congreves hands, which is
extreamly ffine & is generally approv’d off by the best Judges in poetry . . . If

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you design your Poem for the Press no person shall be more Carefull in the
printing of it, nor no one can give a greater Incouragement to it” (Corr, i,
p. 17).2 Bookseller and writer move in the same circles; public and private
judgments coincide.

But why then publish? Granville the polite,

And knowing Walsh, would tell me I could write.
(Epistle to Arbuthnot, 135–6).

The circulating manuscript of the “Pastorals” had already been prepared

for the transition, providing one of Pope’s closest imitations of print, with
exquisite dropped heads, careful contrasts of italic and roman, and footnotes
below a rule, conventions largely followed by Tonson in printing the poem.3
The Tonsons remain a shadowy presence in Pope’s dealings with the trade
as the tantalizing might-have-been. They were Pope’s preferred booksellers,
it seems, but his interest was not reciprocated, at least not enough to offer the
rewards he sought. His second major poem, An Essay on Criticism (15 May
1711), was published by an old schoolfriend William Lewis, even though
it was printed by the elder Tonson’s partner and printer, John Watts.4 The
Tonsons had paid Pope well for the material he contributed to their collec-
tions (13 guineas for the sixth part of the Miscellanies and 15 guineas for
Steele’s Miscellany) but perhaps they declined to make an offer for An Essay
on Criticism – a single poem offering a much more doubtful prospect than a
miscellany – and suggested that Pope publish at his own expense. (A guinea
was worth 21 shillings or £1.05 in modern terms.) Pope’s response might then
have been to turn to his friend Lewis as a better way of handling the process.
The surviving manuscript of An Essay on Criticism was the one that went
to the printer and provides an insight into the control Pope exercised over
the trade at this stage of his career and later. It was issued as a quarto
pamphlet, a format produced by folding a sheet into four leaves, making a
square book, that Pope was to use for the subscription editions of Homer
and for his Works. Pope plots the printing, page by page. He was always
interested in sophisticated typographical effects, even if in his later quartos
that sophistication showed itself in plainness. In this essay he uses italic very
heavily, following Creech’s translation of Horace’s Art of Poetry, in adopting
an emphatic tone and highlighting topics for the eager student:

Those Rules of old discover’d, not devis’d,

Are Nature still, but Nature Methodiz’d;
Nature, like Monarchy, is but restrain’d
By the same Laws which first herself ordain’d.
(Essay on Criticism, 88–91)

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This italic was dropped for the third and subsequent editions. The move-
ment in Pope’s career is towards a more chaste typography, without ital-
ics, ornaments or capitalized nouns, though he will later revive italic in
smaller octavo editions (eight leaves per sheet) he prepares for the general
public.5

Bernard Lintot
An Essay on Criticism had appeared a week before Pope’s birthday, 21 May,
in 1711. Just over a year later the publication of Miscellaneous Poems and
Translations (20 May 1712) marked the start of his extraordinarily success-
ful alliance with Bernard Lintot.6 Lintot aimed to rival the Tonsons as the
major literary publisher of the early years of the eighteenth century, and Pope
enabled him to make a success of the project. Lintot came from Horsham
in Sussex and he and Pope may have been brought together by the Carylls
of West Grinstead, the two families having some connections. Caryll had an
interest in Miscellaneous Poems and Translations through “The Rape of the
Locke” (“This Verse to C—l, Muse! is due”) and the Chaucer translations
supposedly by the actor Thomas Betterton (Corr, i, p. 142). Lintot’s status
as a country gentleman as well as a stationer may explain Pope’s pleasure in
depicting him as something of an oaf who had to trick others into checking
his translations because he had no languages (Corr, i, pp. 371–5). Lintot
clearly valued Pope (I suspect he thought he was a great writer), but Pope
did not reciprocate.
John Gay and Nicholas Rowe also moved to Lintot’s stable at the time of
Miscellaneous Poems and Translations, and there is a strong sense of excite-
ment at the new relationship. Pope’s “Verses to be Prefix’d before Bernard
Lintot’s New Miscellany” are a playful expression of such excitement:

Some Colinæus praise, some Bleau,

Others account ’em but so so;
Some Plantin to the rest prefer,
And some esteem Old-Elzevir;
Others with Aldus would besot us;
I, for my part, admire Lintottus. —
(TE, vi, pp. 82–3)

Lintot takes his place as the culmination of this little history of printing,
and Pope shows intimate knowledge of his business, picking out “Lintot”’s
regular appearance in capitals, the cleanness of the printing, and Lintot’s
willingness to pay for his copy. Lintot certainly paid Pope well for his poems,
though not over generously. John Nichols’s extracts from his accounts show

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payments for these works: Essay on Criticism (£15), Miscellaneous Poems (15
guineas, £7, £3.16.6), Windsor-Forest (30 guineas), Ode for Musick (£15),
additions to Rape of the Lock (£15), Temple of Fame (30 guineas), Key to
the Lock (10 guineas). These payments are in line with top payments to
other writers: Richard Barford’s The Assembly: A Poem, for example, got
15 guineas and Gay’s Trivia £43. But it was the Iliad that set Pope up as a
major earner from his writing (around £5,000 from the six volumes), and the
contrast with his other earnings is quite remarkable. The Iliad translation
was designed from the start as an income-generating venture. In a revealing
conversation with Spence, Pope said, “What led me into that [The Iliad] . . .
was purely the want of money. I had then none – not even to buy books”
(Anecdotes, i, p. 82).
Subscription allowed the author to benefit both from the trade, through
a copyright payment, and from a form of collective patronage (especially if
some subscribers paid for multiple copies without collecting them). Lintot
generously not only paid for the copyright but also subsidized the subscrip-
tion by providing free copies. (Tickell, translating for Tonson, paid for his at
cost.) The contract was signed on 23 March 1714 and the surviving copies,
in the British Library and the Bodleian, show that there was a dramatic last-
minute change in the arrangements from an octavo to a quarto edition, which
was a bigger, riskier deal for Lintot. In order to meet the increased cost of the
subscription copies (the expenditure on paper would have doubled), Lintot
decided he must sell even larger-format copies himself (which meant folios,
with the sheet folded only once) and print a combination of large-paper (250)
and small folios, called “pott” from the watermark sometimes used (1,750).
The result is the strange arrangement, with repercussions throughout Pope’s
career, whereby the subscription copies were in the smaller cheaper format,
though they had illustrations, and the trade editions were in the grander
folio. As David Foxon has explained, Lintot miscalculated. If he could have
sold the 2,000 folios, he might have had a profit of £728, divided equally
between himself and Pope, but after the first edition he reduced the order
for pott folios from 1,750 to 1,000, thereby limiting his own potential profit
to £111 per volume.7 There were other problems for Lintot – about how the
subscribers were to get their copies and about when the trade edition could
be launched – which led to him sending Pope a somewhat desperate note on
10 June, pleading for co-operation:

All your Books were deliverd pursuant to your direction the middle of the
Week after you left Us . . . Pray detain me not from publishing my Own Book
having deliverd the greatest part of the Subscribers allready, upwards of four
hundred.

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I designd to publish Monday sevennight pray interrupt me not by an Errata.

I doubt not the Sale of Homer if you do not dissapoint me by delaying the
Publication. (Corr, i, p. 295)

Pope would have resented these disputes, but he had every reason to be
pleased. He had 657 subscribers rather than the anticipated 750, but they
paid him 6 guineas each and he already had his copy money. His profit from
The Iliad is usually estimated at around £5,000.
Lintot was not so dissatisfied with the arrangement for The Iliad that
he was unwilling to make a similar agreement with Pope for The Odyssey.
Tonson lurks in the background here, later to serve as a cause of the breach
between them. Fenton told Broome: “Tonson does not care to contract for
the copy, and application has been made to Lintot, upon which he exerts the
true spirit of a scoundrel, believing he has Pope entirely at his mercy” (Corr,
ii, p. 214). Lintot did reduce the copy money from 1200 to 350 guineas,
or 70 guineas a volume, around a third of the payment for The Iliad. The
generous arrangement for the subscribers’ copies, however, remained essen-
tially unchanged. The delivery problem was solved by issuing the five vol-
umes in two blocks, with Pope responsible for deliveries. The time between
subscription and trade publication was shortened to one week. All seemed
set fair, with good rewards promised for author and bookseller. But there
was, nevertheless, a serious quarrel. Perhaps Lintot had been unaware of
the significance of a change in the wording of the two Homer contracts.
In the first Pope intended to “translate Homer’s Iliads”; in the second he
had “undertaken a Translation of Homer’s Odysses.” For The Odyssey, he
had two collaborators, Fenton (four out of twenty-four books) and Broome
(eight). The collaboration was subsequently the source of adverse publicity,
but there is no evidence that Lintot was ignorant of this arrangement, or that
he objected. The problem, more likely, lay with Tonson. Pope had agreed to
edit Shakespeare for Tonson for £100, and unfortunately the Shakespeare
was advertised at the same time as The Odyssey. The Shakespeare was also
a subscription edition, but the subscription was for the benefit of Tonson,
not Pope. Advertisements for both books appeared in the journals on 23
January 1725.8 Here was a rival publication with Pope’s name attached, and
at the very moment that Lintot was taking in subscriptions for Pope at his
shop, Tonson was using Pope’s name to take in subscriptions for himself at
his. In retaliation, Lintot decided to advertise his own subscription edition of
The Odyssey and undercut Pope by offering the five volumes for 4 guineas.
The terms closely echoed those Tonson was offering for the Shakespeare. I
doubt whether Lintot damaged Pope’s subscription by this offer, and he may
have succeeded in shifting his own stock more quickly, but he undoubtedly

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offended Pope, who resolved to have nothing more to do with him. But Lin-
tot held the copyright to the early poems, and within ten years Pope was
co-operating with him again.

Edmund Curll
Lintot now changed character among Pope’s book trade personae, becoming
a villain. Hitherto he had played a comic-solemn role, subsidiary to Edmund
Curll’s villain. Curll had first come into serious conflict with Pope over Court
Poems in 1716, suggesting they might be written by Pope, or Gay, or a “Lady
of Quality,” a reference to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. The reference to
Montagu probably made Pope feel entitled to behave in the way he did,
which was to give Curll an emetic/laxative and then publicize his action; it
was, as Norman Ault suggests, the only form of chivalric action open to an
invalid (Prose, i, pp. xcvi–xcvii). The resulting pamphlets show a curious
mixture of intimacy and contempt: A Full and True Account of a Horrid
and Barbarous Revenge by Poison on the Body of Mr. Edmund Curll, Book-
seller, With a Faithful Copy of his Last Will and Testament (1716) and A
Further Account of the Most Deplorable Condition of Mr. Edmund Curll
(1716). Pope’s knowledge of Curll’s business is astonishing, a combination
of personal enthusiasm and good information from Tonson, who identified
Curll as the publisher of Court Poems. Curll embodies the failings of the
trade, confessions of malpractice tumbling from his mouth: “I do sincerely
pray Forgiveness for those indirect Methods I have pursued in inventing
new Titles to old Books, putting Authors Names to Things they never saw,
publishing private Quarrels for publick Entertainment” (Prose, i, p. 262).
He takes no responsibility for his publications, hides behind the name of
other booksellers, vilifies great men of either party, distorts the facts, puts
out works under the names of famous authors when they are not theirs, pub-
lishes incorrect editions, abuses great authors, and publishes pornography
as a major source of income.
“A Further Account” equals its predecessor in its account of the trade,
but the emphasis shifts from the bookseller to his authors. Pat Rogers has
observed that this “Account” provides “practically a working gazetteer” of
the Grub Street subculture.9 Curll, summoning all his authors for their final
instructions, gives his porter descriptions and addresses: “At the Bedsted and
Bolster, a Musick House in Morefields, two Translators in a Bed together,”
“At the Hercules and Still in Vinegar-yard, a School-Master with Carbuncles
on his Nose,” and so on (Prose, i, p. 278). Some of these figures may be
identified, others may be merely plausible, but the effect is of capturing
precisely a needy and disaffected group in their habitats. When they stand

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before Curll on his close-stool, Curll tells them they are to be the libellers of
Pope, who is to become the direct as well as indirect victim of the corruptions
of the trade. Curll’s own role, energetically accepted, was to become for Pope
the antithesis of respectable publication. As such he is given a vivid role in the
poetry, but Pope also learnt much by imitation. Curll’s interest in biography
led to publication of the letters; his miscellanies provoked the Pope-Swift
miscellanies; his notes were developed into official notes; and his guile in
publication stimulated Pope into ruses of his own. In some respects Curll
was the master and Pope his apprentice.

The Dunciad
The book trade promises to loom larger in The Dunciad (1728) than it actu-
ally does. Martinus Scriblerus in the Variorum edition (1729) offers us the
prospect of a vision of technological determinism that the poem never real-
izes. Pope’s cultural commentary, of course, remains reticent in ascribing
responsibility for the cultural malaise it identifies – social action is trans-
formed by a mythology that obscures human agency – but the Court, the
monarchy, the aristocracy, and educational institutions are responsible for
the reign of Dulness, not the printing press. Scriblerus, as so often in his “Of
the Poem” gives us a false lead.

We shall next declare the occasion and the cause which moved our Poet to this
particular work. He lived in those days, when (after providence had permitted
the Invention of Printing as a scourge for the Sins of the learned) Paper also
became so cheap, and printers so numerous, that a deluge of authors cover’d
the land: Whereby not only the peace of the honest unwriting subject was
daily molested, but unmerciful demands were made of his applause, yea of his
money, by such as would neither earn the one, or deserve the other.
(TE, v, p. 49)

The idea that printing is a scourge for the learned is not a view Pope himself
endorses elsewhere in the poem. Consequently, we find uncreative individ-
uals rather than processes: no paper-making, no harassed compositors and
pressmen, no contracts, no distribution, and, of course, very few sales. The
poem, though its notes draw on extensive knowledge of the trade, evinces
much less detailed knowledge than the two accounts of Curll’s sufferings.
That said, the action in the first two books focuses on the piecework-slaves
of the book trade and their masters. Tibbald’s lodgings in the first book
might well be Vinegar-yard, and the two sisters, Poverty and Poetry, lying
shivering together in one bed (i, 32), recollect the two translators together in
Moorfields and represent the Grub Street from which the material of “Curl’s

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chaste press, and Lintot’s rubric post” (i, 38) springs. In the second book
these booksellers become actors in the narrative, and Dulness’s games reveal
their natures and demonstrate their prowess. Excrement is again deployed
as a motif, though in more diverse ways than in the scenes of Curll’s dis-
comfiture, its associations with money-making and with scandal being made
plain. The first scene of the games is the Strand, an important book trade
centre, but Pope does not use book trade patterns of distribution as a way of
showing the extension of Dulness’s influence. The first race is for the phan-
tom poet, with Curll and Lintot the two challengers. The treatment of these
two figures is surprisingly generous and comic, with a nice contrast between
Lintot’s lumbering self-assertion and Curll’s impudence. As so often, partic-
ulars (Lintot’s payments to James Moore Smythe) underlie the action. Lintot
immediately claims the prize, but Curll quickly responds:

Alone untaught to fear,

Stood dauntless Curl, “Behold that rival here!
The race by vigor, not by vaunts is won;
So take the hindmost Hell.” – He said, and run.
Swift as a bard the bailiff leaves behind,
He left huge Lintot, and out-stript the wind.
As when a dab-chick waddles thro’ the copse,
On feet and wings, and flies, and wades, and hops;
So lab’ring on, with shoulders, hand, and head,
Wide as a windmill all his figure spread,
With legs expanded Bernard urg’d the race,
And seem’d to emulate great Jacob’s pace.
(Dunciad, ii, 53–64)

Lintot’s clumsiness is finally made to stand as a metaphor for his rivalry

with Tonson. Even in his competition with Curll he is outstripped by his
swifter rival, who, strengthened by the ordure into which he falls (specifi-
cally publication of Pope’s letters), goes on to win. He also wins a second,
urinating competition, for Eliza Haywood, in which he challenges the novel-
ist’s publisher, Chetwood. The attack is not inappropriately directed at Curll
the pornographer, but it otherwise tells us little about his business.
The urinating contest ends the detailed examination of book trade figures
in The Dunciad. In the four-book revision of the contest (1743–4), Chetwood
is simply replaced by Osborne, who is accused in the notes of having sold Iliad
folios as subscription quartos. The one book trade incident in the new Book
iv of the poem neatly represents the movement of Pope’s thought, which
is away from ridicule of Grub Street towards a critique of high culture and
learning. Sir Thomas Hanmer presents the goddess with his luxurious edition

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of Shakespeare, but this is not a trade edition. It is an expensive product of

Oxford University Press, and, as Pope insists, it is not even marketed, being
distributed to gentleman commoners gratis. The responsibility of the book
trade for the advance of the reign of Dulness remains a minor one.

Wright, Gilliver, and Dodsley

For The Dunciad Variorum Pope needed a new bookseller and printer he
could supervise closely. He chose a manipulable young bookseller, Lawton
Gilliver, just out of his apprenticeship, and an experienced printer, John
Wright, who had been foreman to the Tory printer John Barber. A skilled
printer was needed for the Variorum and for some of Pope’s other experi-
ments over the next six or seven years, and the playing with many-layered
notes, parallel texts, black letter or Gothic type, and varied typographical
styles, were expressive of Pope’s new control over his printer. John Dennis
reports that work on the Variorum did not go altogether easily:

Does not half the Town know, that honest J. W. was the only Dunce that was
persecuted and plagu’d by this Impression? that Twenty times the Rhapsodist
alter’d every thing that he gave the Printer? and that Twenty times, W. in his
Rage and in Fury, threaten’d to turn the Rhapsody back upon the Rhapsodist’s
Hands? (TE, v, p. xxvii)

Nevertheless, The Dunciad Variorum is an able printing job. The types are
not new and there is some heavy inking to compensate, but a complicated
design is realized with some aplomb: a mock-epic in quarto is created to sit
alongside the Homer translations.
Relations with Gilliver were even more perplexed, with Pope facing up to
a problem that was to haunt the second half of his career – that of copyright.
In order to claim copyright, the work had to be entered in the Stationers’
Register; such entries were usually made by members of the Company and
for a while Pope seems to have thought that they had to be. That created
problems when he wanted to keep his identity secret or declined to give a
proper assignment to a bookseller, as was the case with the Variorum. Instead
he assigned the copyright to Lords Bathurst, Burlington, and Oxford in order
to protect himself, and they eventually assigned the copyright to Gilliver. As
a result, Gilliver’s case against the pirates of the first edition failed because he
could not establish his property. Pope later brought cases in Chancery over
his letters (Curll), over the Essay on Man (Bickerton), and over The Dunciad
(Lintot) in an attempt to secure his property.
Pope’s plans for the second half of his career were fairly clear at the time of
The Dunciad: using Gilliver and Wright, he would publish first The Dunciad

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and then a great philosophical poem in several epistles; the two would then
be combined as a new volume of works. The Essay on Man would be the
first section of the great poem and each of its four books would have a cor-
responding illustrative epistle or epistles. Gilliver would hold the copyright
to The Dunciad, but Pope would retain the rights to his philosophical mag-
num opus. The scheme was completed in outline, and a publishing success.
The Lords paid Pope £100 for The Dunciad. For each of the epistles Gilliver
agreed to pay £50 for the copyright for one year, taking on the responsibility
of entering them in the Stationers’ Register. Gilliver knew that at the end of
the scheme of publication he would have a half share in the second volume
of Works, as a result of The Dunciad.
In addition to the publication of his own works, Pope sent other business
to Gilliver and Wright. It seems likely, for example, that he had an investment
in the Grub-street Journal, and used Gilliver, who was its leading proprietor,
as an agent who would occasionally influence policy. He also helped move
the work of friends and protégés along the road to publication. Additional
printers and publishers involved in these arrangements could also assist Pope
when anonymity was needed. The first epistle of an Essay on Man was printed
by John Huggonson, who was then the printer of the Grub-street Journal,
and the name that appeared on the title page and in the Stationers’ Register
was that of the Journal’s publisher, John Wilford.
As one might anticipate, Pope and Gilliver fell out over the profits from sale
of the Works. Pope had to pay for his half of the edition and then sell those
copies. He clearly expected that Gilliver would take care of that for him, but
Gilliver offered 13s. a copy, rather than 17s., and as a result lost his place
as Pope’s bookseller to Robert Dodsley, who set up shop with Pope’s help
in Spring 1735. If Pope had remained on good terms with Gilliver, we might
know less of the affair of the publication of the Letters, which so damaged
Pope’s reputation. When in 1729 Pope prepared an edition of the Posthumous
Works of William Wycherley II (an edition aborted for copyright reasons) as
a riposte to Theobald’s edition of Wycherley, he printed extra copies of his
own correspondence with Wycherley on better paper and added some other
letters. He then kept them, waiting for an occasion on which they might be
used. Such an opportunity seemed to occur in 1735, just as a new copyright
bill was going through Parliament. Writing as “PT,” an enemy of Pope, Pope
managed to persuade Curll that he had authentic letters that he already had
printed. There was an elaborate charade, with James Worsdale, the painter,
dressed as a clergyman, acting as Pope’s agent, but eventually Curll received
two batches of letters, only to be brought before the bar of the House of
Lords on a charge of printing the letters of peers. Pope may have been trying
to give Curll a fright, and to influence the copyright bill (which was in fact

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lost), but it seems unlikely that he was trying to injure him seriously. Curll
responded to his accusers by telling the truth, and, having worked out most
of the story, published it along with the letters.

The Plot is now discover’d: Lawton Gilliver has declared that you [Pope]
bought of him the Remainder of the Impression of Wycherley’s letters, which
he printed, by your Direction, in 1728, and have printed, Six Hundred of the
additional Letters, with those to Mr. Cromwell, to make up the volume.10

Pope, protesting at the evil of publication of his letters, published his sub-
scription edition in 1737. Later, in a landmark case against Curll (1741), he
established copyright in private letters.11
From Works (1735) onwards Pope regularly brought out new volumes
of his octavo works, collecting new material and re-presenting old. These
volumes were printed by Wright or Henry Woodfall and marketed by Robert
Dodsley (who made entries in the Stationers’ Register) and by Thomas and
Mary Cooper (who handled the distribution). With the advice of Nathaniel
Cole, solicitor to the Stationers’ Company, and his friend William Murray,
he brought or threatened legal action against those who pirated material.
Only in his final years, under the influence of William Warburton, who had
become his commentator, did he return again to quarto editions with a chaste
typography, a project that was to be interrupted by his death.
Although, with his attacks on Grub Street, his hostility to individual book-
sellers, and his sense of the unreliability of print, Pope can be thought of as
an enemy to the book trade, few writers made better use of its resources.
Most often when planning a work, he thought of it as a book, and began
to plot its appearance, manufacture, and marketing. To a significant degree,
these plans succeeded and set the patterns of presentation and debate that
have persisted to the present day.

NOTES

1. The best account of Tonson is Kathleen M. Lynch, Jacob Tonson: Kit-Cat Pub-
lisher (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1971).
2. Margaret J. M. Ezell treats Pope’s manuscript circulation in Social Authorship
and the Advent of Print (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999).
3. The manuscript is reproduced with others in Maynard Mack, The Last and
Greatest Art: Some Unpublished Poetical Manuscripts of Alexander Pope
(Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1984).
4. John Nichols, Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century, 8 vols. (London:
Printed for the author by Nichols, Son, and Bentley, 1812–16), viii, p. 300,
suggests that Lintot paid Pope rather than Lewis for the copyright.

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5. This is one of the themes of David Foxon’s Pope and the Early Eighteenth-
Century Book Trade (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), especially in the final
two chapters. An Essay on Criticism is treated on pp. 162–80.
6. Summer was not a good time to publish. I wonder whether Pope sometimes
arranged publication to coincide with his birthday. His final poem The Dunciad
in Four Books was published on 29 October 1743, the eve of George II’s sixtieth
birthday.
7. Foxon, Pope and the Book Trade, pp. 51–63. My account of this whole episode
is heavily indebted to Foxon, with further detail drawn from my “The Contract
for Pope’s Translation of Homer’s Iliad: An Introduction and Transcription,”
The Library 6:15 (1993): pp. 206–25.
8. The proposals make the nature of the translation and subscriptions clear. Pope
quotes them in The Dunciad Variorum (TE, v, p. 31); it is unlikely he would
have risked seriously misrepresenting them.
9. Pat Rogers, Grub Street: Studies in a Subculture (London: Methuen, 1972),
pp. 82–3.
10. Alexander Pope, Mr Pope’s Literary Correspondence. Volume the Second
(London: Printed for Edmond Curll, 1735), p. xiv. I provide further details in
my “The First Printing and Publication of Pope’s Letters,” Library 6:2 (1980):
pp. 264–80.
11. Pat Rogers, “The Case of Pope v. Curll,” The Library, 5:27 (1972): pp. 326–
31; and Harry Ransom, “The Personal Letter as Literary Property,” Studies in
English 30 (1951): pp. 116–31.

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VA L E R I E R U M B O L D

Pope and gender

Pope’s work was both energized and constrained by gender; but evaluating
its effects is far from straightforward, since gender in Pope’s time was nei-
ther a monolithic system nor an entirely stable one, and major shifts were
under way that would have far-reaching effects on understandings of what
it meant to live as a man or a woman.1 For instance, the progress of nor-
mative heterosexual masculinity in stigmatizing its homosexual other was
gradually ruling out the possibility both that boys might be counted among
the objects of a manly passion, and that excessive infatuation with women
might itself be counted as effeminacy. Meanwhile, the older model of elite
femininity associated with intellectual culture, public sociability and house-
hold authority was being eclipsed by an emphasis on female domesticity that
emanated from the middle ranks of society. These are just two instances, but
sufficient to indicate the scale and importance of some of the changes at
work. For Pope, marked as different by his disability, his Catholic religion,
and his Tory loyalties, gender would entail a particularly difficult interface
between challenge and conventionality, one that stimulated some kinds of
imaginative work while it closed down others.2

Sociability and sexuality

Pope was the child of elderly parents, and was brought up at home with the
help of a wet nurse, an old aunt who taught him his letters, and, later, a
Catholic priest who acted as tutor.3 In response to anti-Catholic legislation
his parents retired to the Thames valley village of Binfield, where he spent
his teenage years; and here he had the benefit of meeting among his retired
neighbours men who had in their time been notable wits and statesmen. At
the same time, having contracted spinal tuberculosis, most probably from
his wet nurse, Pope began to suffer noticeably from stunted growth, curva-
ture of the spine, and a range of debilitating symptoms; and this, together
with his Catholic family’s civil disabilities, increasingly barred him from

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crucial masculine activities.4 Forbidden to attend school or university (with

the exception of an unrewarding spell at a small illegal Catholic establish-
ment), to own land (and consequently his own home) or to work in the
service of the crown (for instance as Poet Laureate), he was also barred by
physical disability from active sports, and, in his own judgment (if we credit
his various remarks on the topic), from marriage.5 As a boy he used his
relative isolation to read voraciously, and he learned all he could from the
literary men among his retired neighbours, but, having only a much older
half-sister by his father’s first marriage, he suffered many of the disadvan-
tages of the only child, exacerbated by the preponderance of the elderly in
his immediate circle, and by his exclusion from the masculine peer group of
school and college. He learned early to occupy the role of promising young-
ster, basking in the attention of accomplished older men, a dynamic which
would underlie several of his most important adult friendships: Atterbury
and Swift were his elders by two decades, and Bolingbroke by one.
Pope’s combination of civil and medical disabilities entailed restrictions
in many ways close to those within which women had to operate; but he
also lived strenuously, insofar as his health permitted, as a member of a
masculine cultural and intellectual world. The privileges of this homosocial
milieu were vital to him; and he pursued masculine sociability and friendship
by entertaining friends at home, by undertaking long-distance visits, and by
keeping up a voluminous correspondence. Such masculine friendship could
reach the pitch of hero worship: in the case of the charismatic Bolingbroke,
Brean Hammond describes him as adopting an admiring role of “quasi-
feminine passivity.”6 Yet Pope bid fair for his own standing in this masculine
world: building on the success of his translation of Homer’s epics of war and
heroism an unprecedented commercial career as poet, he projected the image
of a manly spokesman for traditional values, independent both of patron
and of party. So effective, apparently, was the masculine allure with which
he played the role of published poet that he found himself embarrassed by
the attentions of an infatuated woman who called herself “Amica,” probably
the first female fan in literary history to make such a nuisance of herself that
she had to be asked to desist (Life, pp. 796–801).
Observers at the time and since have seemed puzzled by the fact that Pope
cherished a life-long friendship with Martha Blount without ever, appar-
ently, proposing marriage – leading to allegations that they were lovers or
were secretly married (we are reminded of similar speculations about Swift
and Esther Johnson).7 Pope spoke of himself as a ludicrous partner for any
presentable woman, a theme that his enemy Colley Cibber would develop in
painful detail when he described how he had forcibly dragged “the little-tiny
Manhood of Mr. Pope” off a prostitute for his own good (the alleged motive

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being even more suspect than the anecdote itself).8 Yet it also has to be said
that Pope’s largely celibate life suited him in important ways: living in tender
companionship with his widowed mother, he retained a large degree of con-
trol over his time and his domestic space, and could often manage long visits
to the homes of friends. To imagine a counterfactual Pope with a wife and
children is not easy, given the extreme commitment and professionalism that
marked his writing career. In An Epistle to Arbuthnot, where “The Muse but
serv’d to ease some Friend, not Wife, | To help me thro’ this long Disease,
my Life,” he even fashions for himself a role as mother to his own mother’s
senility, setting himself “to Rock the Cradle of reposing Age” (131–2, 409).9
The vignette certainly emphasizes how good a son he is (itself an important
manly role), but also suggests that the dynastic dead end in which he finds
himself entails, along with a loss of manly scope, a marginality in some sense
crucial to his poetic career. Finding his friends principally among the political
opposition, committed to a minority religious community whose values and
assumptions often irritated him, without house or land to transmit to the
next generation, and relatively free of implication in the patriarchal politics
of ruling a family, he arguably had an ideal position from which to launch
the frequently oppositional work that would characterize his career: with
regard to gender, this would include, alongside much that exploited in one
way or another the customary tropes of masculine authority and feminine
contingency, poems explicitly critical of the patriarchal limitations imposed
on women, notably Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady, Eloisa to
Abelard, and “To a Lady with the Works of Voiture.”
Pope was drawn to witty, outspoken women – people who to some extent
shared his talents and interests – but tended to fall out with them in the
longer term. He flirted with the outgoing Teresa Blount only in the end to
quarrel with her in favour of lifelong devotion to her shy sister Martha.10 His
fascination with Lady Mary Wortley Montagu ended in obsessive attacks on
her as a filthy and avaricious whore.11 Isobel Grundy sees even in his early
letters to her “the hostility already immanent in the adoration”: that is, “he
constructs her as a beautiful body – implicitly a nude body – while she is
busy constructing herself as doing and seeing and writing.”12 His basic prej-
udices about women made it impossible to integrate into a stable friendship
the boldness and autonomy that attracted him. This was a period when,
despite the actual ferment around notions of gender, many assumed that the
characteristics and proper roles of the sexes were timeless and unchanging.
The male was associated with strength of body and of mind, along with the
moral and rational capacities that conferred authority in family and public
life, while the female was marked as inferior by a problematic combination
of poor judgment and weak self-discipline with a body dominated by its

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sexual functions. Women were not to be trusted with autonomy, and the
chastity that could alone ensure that a husband’s children were his own was
preached to them as the sine qua non of virtue. Pope comments (not nec-
essarily sympathetically) on one of the belittling effects for women of the
resulting double standard:

What is generally accepted as Virtue in women, is very different from what is

thought so in men: A very good woman would make but a paltry man.
(Prose, i, p. 161)

Yet particularly since the word “man” was unabashedly used in this period
to denote both the species and the sex, it was hard for women to challenge
such a masculinist account of the human condition without giving up the
claim either to womanhood or to virtue. The excluded shadow of Pope’s
“paltry man” thus haunts the margins of a professedly generalizing poem
like the Essay on Man, where the examples are preponderantly male:

Shame to the virgin, to the matron pride,

Fear to the statesman, rashness to the chief,
To kings presumption, and to crowds belief.
(Essay on Man, ii, 242–4)

Men are assumed to manifest various public characters in a way that is

unavailable to women: they, allotted only to private life, are distinguished
only by marital status.13 Later in the poem Pope moves from an account of
procreation, where women are specifically mentioned as mothers, to specu-
lations on political origins that are derived entirely from relations between
fathers and sons: there is no felt need to spell out the place of women in the
political hierarchies that result (iii, 119–26, 211–34). The masculine in fact
appropriates so much of the human that the feminine is left with no viable
standpoint. Although at first glance the pairings and contrasts typical of the
heroic couplet may seem straightforwardly mimetic of a system in which the
sexes are defined as balanced and freestanding opposites, slippages and non
sequiturs tell a different story.14
Pope’s letters and poems show him inhabiting a range of established modes
of masculinity: rather than seeing these as spurious or contradictory, we
might consider each as in its way reflecting, at least provisionally, an aspect
of the manly competence to which he aspired. As a young man he wrote
to the established man-about-town Henry Cromwell in the style of a rake,
which later caused embarrassment when the letters were published without
his consent.15 To ladies he knows and likes early in life he presents himself as a
slyly accomplished practitioner of conventionally gallant double-entendre.16
He also warms to the Ovidian tradition of sympathy for women suffering

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at the hands of ungrateful or disloyal men. This harmonised with his char-
acteristic emotional impulse to cast himself as champion of women friends
who found themselves in marital and financial difficulty, an impulse that
on occasion made him enemies.17 In his mature correspondence there is a
characteristically intimate manly style that stresses friendship and familial
duty, sharing the concern for his widowed mother and for his friends’ well-
being in this world and the next that he would fashion into the climax of
his self-presentation in the Epistle to Arbuthnot. Yet in the 1730s he also
presents himself as an outrageously indecent imitator of Horace’s advocacy
of safe sex with boys and prostitutes (safe, that is, insofar as they have no
husbands to take revenge): Sober Advice from Horace adds to the original a
plethora of slurs on women in general and on his friend-turned-antagonist
Lady Mary in particular; and the performance is crowned with a mock-
scholarly commentary designed to embarrass his classicist bête noire Richard
Bentley.
Sober Advice is a salutary reminder that the education in Latin and Greek
that boys entered upon once separated from female tutelage was a key factor
in forming elite male identity. Carolyn Williams has shown how Pope used his
translation of Homer to vindicate his own manliness, in an important sense
compromised by his exclusion from the educational establishment in which
such manly learning was traditionally acquired; and she indicates how this
classical context is crucial to a whole range of his negotiations of gender.18
The caricature of Lord Hervey as Sporus in the Epistle to Arbuthnot is after
all rooted in allusion to the sexual tyranny of a Roman emperor, while the
Atticus portrait taunts Addison with allusion to the Roman hero Cato and
Atticus the friend of Cicero. Yet the “manly ways” on which the poet congrat-
ulates himself cannot necessarily be quite so straightforwardly understood as
modern notions of normative heterosexual masculinity might suggest. James
McLaverty presents To Arbuthnot and Sober Advice from Horace as twin
responses to the attacks Hervey and Lady Mary had published against Pope,
and discerns in the latter a strategy of teasing the reader with the pederastic
assumptions of Horace’s original, which are largely neutralized in the text,
only to be gratuitously highlighted in the mock-scholarly commentary: in
this account the contrast between Pope and Hervey would not be that one
is heterosexual and the other bisexual, but that one is manly in his passions,
and the other passively venal.19 Whatever the reader’s judgment, the classi-
cal context of masculine education and its tradition of reading the gender
formations of antiquity through a Christianizing lens is too important to
ignore. Sober Advice also reminds us that for a balanced view of Pope and
gender we must be prepared to explore even the poems least attractive and
accessible to modern readers.

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The Rape of the Lock

Few of Pope’s poems are as explicit in their concern with gender as The
Rape of the Lock, published in substantially different versions in 1712 and
1714, and with the addition of Clarissa’s speech in 1717.20 At its heart is a
failed courtship, modeled on a quarrel in a Catholic circle connected with
Pope’s. Belinda is initially constructed as the hyperbolic divinity of traditional
male gallantry, and is compared to the sun (i, 14; ii, 1–14). (Compare the
moon-like women who in practice preserved Pope’s esteem the longest.)21
She dresses in a parody of the arming of the epic hero (enabling Pope to
combine traditional gibes at female vanity with celebration of the imperial
commerce that brings “the various Off’rings of the World” to her dressing
table); and she conquers “two adventrous Knights” – her loud exultation
over her victory signaling aspirations far beyond what her society sanctions
for women (i, 121–48; iii, 26).
Polarised on either side of her are two extreme examples of female types
between which, after the cutting of the lock, she has to choose (although
both, in line with anti-feminist stereotypes, are male-focused women of ques-
tionable integrity who have no real solidarity with Belinda). Her supposed
friend, “fierce Thalestris,” who instigates the heroine’s campaign to regain
the severed lock, has an Amazonian name; but far from defying subordina-
tion on Belinda’s behalf, she turns out to value even the outward appearance
of gender decorum, however deceptive, far more than she values her (iv, 89–
120). If the Baron does succeed in keeping the lock he has stolen, Thalestris
will feel obliged to drop her: “’Twill then be Infamy to seem your Friend!” At
the opposite pole, Clarissa, whose name connotes brightness and the clarity
of truth, speaks for feminine self-restraint; but no-one in the poem applauds
what she says (“Thalestris call’d her Prude”), and we are not likely to for-
get that it was she who had put the scissors into the Baron’s hand when
she first saw him gazing at Belinda’s hair (iii, 127–8; v, 35). Pope puts into
her mouth a conventional exhortation to good-humored acceptance of male
power and the transience of female beauty; but it is arguably undermined
by the speaker’s duplicity, and by the accomplished complacency with which
Pope makes her deliver her truisms. (The familiar note that Clarissa’s speech
was added “to open more clearly the MORAL of the Poem” is not Pope’s: it
was added by his authorized editor Warburton, who consistently preferred
moral orthodoxy to ambiguity or ambivalence in the texts he annotated.)
The male sex as represented by Sir Plume and the Baron is deeply compro-
mised, leaving Belinda arguably “the most virile figure in the poem.”22 Sir
Plume, for all the designer artefacts that bedeck his person, is a henpecked
nonentity: his resentful original “could not bear that Sir Plume should talk

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nothing but nonsense” (Anecdotes, i, pp. 444–5). When Sir Plume tries to
assert Belinda’s rights his words are utterly ineffectual:

“Plague on’t! ’tis past a jest – nay prithee, pox!

Give her the hair” – he spoke, and rapp’d his box.
It grieves me much (reply’d the Peer again)
Who speaks so well shou’d ever speak in vain.
(iv, 129–32)

The Baron’s courteous but intransigent response may seem, in contrast, to

lay down the law to some effect; but any pretence to masculine authority is
undermined by the wider context. The poem had begun in affected awe at
the risk to “Little Men” of engaging in “Tasks so bold” as to prompt the
“mighty Rage” of “soft Bosoms”; and at the end of the poem the Baron is
felled by Belinda; and whatever his prophecies of her eventual submission to
another, he fails in his attempt to keep hold of the lock (i, 11–12; v, 75–122).
Belinda, however, does not get it back either, for framing the whole action
is a narrative voice which in its power to make things happen, and in its allu-
sions to the heroic realm of epic and of manly learning, demonstrates a mas-
culine potency beyond anything achieved by the male characters themselves:
bringing the action to a close by instructing us to “trust the Muse” (the female
vehicle for writerly mastery to which Pope nominally defers), he takes it upon
himself to put Belinda in her place, a place which he defines by the superi-
ority of masculine art (which is for eternity) to feminine beauty (which is
ephemeral) (v, 123–50). In the context of Pope’s exclusion from so many of
the masculine roles that his society offered, this performance constitutes a
triumphantly masculine command of the classical heritage. Yet in the face of
this apparent gender triumphalism it is worth remembering how teasingly
the miniaturized divine machinery that flitters around Belinda and the Baron
has been represented as a bevy of highly sexual but only provisionally gen-
dered creatures (i, 19–104). For the sylphs, adopting the body of one sex or
the other is merely a stratagem. Subversively adapted from Milton’s angels,
these miniaturized replacements for the tutelary gods of epic leave hovering
the suggestion that gender is after all only a performance, and one that is
undertaken principally for erotic pleasure.23

Eloisa to Abelard
Eloisa to Abelard is another story of lost love that puts the emphasis on the
woman’s experience; but it is conceived in the radically different idiom of
Ovidian erotic tenderness (deriving from Ovid’s Heroides, with their hero-
ines’ laments over lost lovers), and is related to the tradition of heroic love

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which had at the Restoration helped to voice, in the erotic mode, royalist
aspirations to commitments so absolute that only souls prepared to defy
death and fate could sustain them. It is in this vein of melting yet rigorously
idealistic love that Eloisa offers, for example, a defence of free love that
defies everything eighteenth-century women were taught to hold dear (lines
73–98). Also part of the generic appeal to unbridled feeling is the Gothic
atmosphere of Eloisa’s haunted convent and its gloomy setting, constitut-
ing an appeal to subjectivity that finds its context in notions of the female as
impressionable and lacking in rational self-discipline. The tone recalls in part
the letters of natural description and mood painting that Pope wrote to his
friend Martha Blount: one function of such notions of feminine sensibility
in his creative life was evidently to channel esthetic and emotional interests
less easily aligned with the masculine.24
Lovers in the heroic letter are generically absent and unfaithful; but
Abelard’s castration on the orders of Eloisa’s indignant family makes his
case both more complex and more absolute. Indeed, it is clear that his read-
ers included many women who found that the poem spoke to them in com-
pelling but disturbing ways, making it the most responded-to of Pope’s poems
by contemporary women poets.25 They typically took up the poem not to
embrace the relative freedom and sensuality that the mode might seem to
license, but to reassert the chastity and piety that Eloisa defies. Recognizing
in Pope’s ventriloquism the kind of libertine discourse that female honor
depended on resisting, they vindicated the grounds of self-worth they had
been brought up to hold dear. The Rape was in contrast very little answered
or imitated by women poets.26

Epistle to a Lady. Of the Characters of Women

In 1734 Pope published his Epistle to Cobham. Of the Knowledge and Char-
acters of Men, and in the following year his Epistle to a Lady. Of the Char-
acters of Women. Characters of Men presents a very few examples of female
behavior and casts human concerns in a distinctively masculine mold; but
Characters of Women focuses on women as a puzzling group, best defined
by contrast and comparison with the male. This is a rich and complex poem
whose arbitrariness and inconsistencies Pope is unable to resolve; and its
poignancy lies in the fact that although he is writing it for a very much
loved friend, he still has enormous difficulty in formulating praise for her
as a woman that does not hinge either on contrasting her with the allegedly
deplorable norms of her own sex or on likening her to the other. Further-
more, in satirizing women’s characters as unstable he projects onto women
what he was prone on other occasions to diagnose in himself; and while this

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compromises any claim to balance or objective analysis, the struggle between

distrust and identification in his construction of the female renders the rep-
resentation of character in this second poem intrinsically more compelling
than the relatively bland formulations of Characters of Men, where Pope
seems perhaps too relaxed on the familiar masculine terrain of respectful
frankness between author and aristocratic friend.
Having started with the damaging claim that “Most Women have no Char-
acters at all” (2), strategically attributed to Martha herself, and thus initiating
a divide-and-rule policy that will throughout the poem undermine her iden-
tification with her sex, Pope introduces a gallery of female perversities that
comes close to suggesting that femaleness is simply a matter of masquer-
ade, an implication that begs comparison with the provisionality of gender
attributed to the sylphs in the Rape:27

How many pictures of one Nymph we view,

All how unlike each other, all how true!
(5–6)

Yet the ideal character he draws for Martha, herself unmarried and childless,
includes both a husband and a daughter, arguably undermining this repre-
sentation just as much as the inconsistent portraits satirized at the beginning
of the poem, and suggesting that despite the virtues she could have brought
to marriage and motherhood, she falls short of being a fully achieved exem-
plar of her sex (7–14; 257–68). Even as the poem moves to its most con-
vincing testimony of esteem, addressing her as “Friend,” “the one word in
the language that denotes relationships of equality and permanence” (Life,
p. 632), any potential for transcending the constraints of gender is countered
by the tender implausibility with which Pope seeks to persuade her that the
“Virgin Modesty” of “the Moon’s more sober light” really does draw the
eye more than a flaming sunset (249–56). Unlike those sun-identified beau-
ties Belinda, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and Martha’s own sister Teresa,
she holds a place in his affections that is sustainable precisely because she
lacks their wit, confidence, and autonomy. Throughout the poem that cul-
minates in constructing the ideal woman as “a softer Man,” his difficulties
in conceiving fully achieved humanity as female are palpable (272–80).

The Dunciad in Four Books

Dulness, the goddess of the Dunciads, is a female personification rather
unusually constructed around a distinctly physical, self-indulgent notion of
motherhood, an overt threat to the adult masculinity enforced by taking

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boys away from their mothers and nurses and sending them to school. Yet
among all the writers attacked in the Dunciads, very few are women. Nurtu-
rance, not utterance, is emphasized as the female role, with Dulness (subver-
sively reminiscent of Queen Caroline) developed as a seductively comfortable
mother who lulls the nation into perpetual babyhood. Eliza Haywood, the
woman writer who is satirized at greatest length, is imaged as the breast-
feeding mother of bastards: she never utters a word (ii, 157–98).28 Susanna
Centlivre appears only for the moment in which she “felt her voice to fail”
(ii, 411). Allegedly bad women’s writing is never allowed to perform itself
as allegedly bad men’s writing repeatedly does in the poem.29
Thus it is hardly surprising that although Pope labored over a women’s
caterwauling section for the noise-making contest of Book ii, he never pub-
lished it.30 One of the competitors, Mary Pix, was a successful dramatist;
but Pope fails to engage with her plays in any specific or interesting way.
The other, a venomous satirist called “N—,” does not match any known
woman writer of the time. The badly chosen victims resist integration into
any coherent cultural critique. In contrast, the male monkey-jabberers are
identified in a sequence of tightly interlocked units that level author and
output in a meaningless babble associated with the university disputations
from which Pope’s religion excluded him: the passage effectively targets men
whose Protestantism underlay their privilege as it underlay their Whiggish
hostility to a Tory and Catholic poet (ii, 235–42).
It is Blackmore, however, much-ridiculed author of Whig epics, who best
highlights the limitations set by gender on Pope’s writing about women writ-
ers. The episode in which Blackmore wins the prize engages in detail with
Pope’s specific resentments: Protestant dissent and Whig avarice are clearly
engaged as the passage reaches its climax in a reverberating crescendo of care-
fully orchestrated noise (ii, 247–68). The discarded caterwauling episode,
which makes no case at all for women writers’ cultural significance, remains
a very thin joke in comparison with the symphonically coded “o” sounds
that render Blackmore’s performance so paradoxically impressive. Despite
the fascination of reading the fissures and negotiations with which gender
challenged Pope, the gap in the Dunciads where this women’s episode might
have been remains a poignant reminder of the constricting power of gender
– constricting to the person gendering as well as the person gendered.

NOTES
1. For important studies in this area, see Further Reading, pp. 237–246 below.
2. For a reading focused on connections between gender and Pope’s physical and
other disabilities, see Helen Deutsch, Resemblance and Disgrace: Alexander Pope

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and the Deformation of Culture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,

1996). Chapters 2 and 3 carry particular weight in this regard.
3. For Pope’s childhood, see Anecdotes, i, pp. 3–32; Valerie Rumbold, Women’s
Place in Pope’s World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 24–
47.
4. Rumbold, Women’s Place, pp. 2–6.
5. Ibid., pp. 4, 255.
6. Brean S. Hammond, Pope and Bolingbroke: A Study in Friendship and Influence
(Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1984), pp. 3, 11–12, 13.
7. Rumbold, Women’s Place, pp. 128–9.
8. Colley Cibber, A Letter from Mr. Cibber, To Mr. Pope (London: Printed and
sold by W. Lewis, 1742), pp. 47–9; Laura J. Rosenthal, “‘Trials of Manhood’:
Cibber, The Dunciad, and the Masculine Self,” in “More Solid Learning”: New
Perspectives on Alexander Pope’s “Dunciad”, ed. C. Ingrassia and C. N. Thomas
(London: Associated University Presses, 2000), pp. 101–4.
9. For the evolution of the phrase “not Wife,” see J. McLaverty, Pope, Print, and
Meaning (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 207.
10. Rumbold, Women’s Place, pp. 110–30.
11. Ibid., pp. 131–67.
12. Isobel Grundy, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: Comet of the Enlightenment
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. xviii.
13. See also Epistle to a Lady, 207–18 (TE, iii.ii, pp. 67–8).
14. See Carole Fabricant, “Defining Self and Others: Pope and Eighteenth-Century
Gender Ideology,” Criticism 39 (1997): pp. 523–6; Laura Brown, Alexander Pope
(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985), p. 106.
15. Rumbold, Women’s Place, pp. 48–51, 163–4.
16. Ibid., pp. 51–3.
17. Ibid., pp. 3–109.
18. Carolyn D. Williams, Pope, Homer, and Manliness: Some Aspects of Eighteenth-
Century Classical Learning (London: Routledge, 1993).
19. McLaverty, Pope, Print, and Meaning, pp. 173–208.
20. For the poem’s origins and versions, see Rumbold, Women’s Place, pp. 48–82.
21. Ibid., pp. 148–9, 277.
22. S. Clark, “‘Let Blood and Body bear the fault’: Pope and Misogyny,” in Pope:
New Contexts, ed. D. Fairer (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1990),
p. 93.
23. See John Milton, Paradise Lost, ed. A. Fowler, 2nd edn. (Harlow: Addison Wesley
Longman, 1998), vol. viii, 614–29.
24. Rumbold, Women’s Place, p. 253.
25. Claudia N. Thomas, Alexander Pope and his Eighteenth-Century Women Read-
ers (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1994), pp. 190–3.
26. Except for Maria Edgeworth’s novelistic use of the Rape: see Susan Matthews,
“‘Matter too soft’: Pope and the Women’s Novel”, in Pope: New Contexts, ed. D.
Fairer (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheat, 1990), pp. 103–20 (116–19).
27. Matthews, “Matter too Soft,” p. 105, notes in these lines a subversive poten-
tial assimilable to Lacanian feminism. See also Judith Butler, Gender Trouble:
Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, 2nd edn. (London: Routledge, 1999),
pp. 171–80.

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28. Line references are to Alexander Pope: The Dunciad in Four Books, ed. Valerie
Rumbold (London: Addison Wesley Longman, 1999).
29. Cf. Fabricant on the politics of representation, “Defining Self,” pp. 503–7.
30. Valerie Rumbold, “Cut the Caterwauling,” Review of English Studies 52 (2001):
pp. 524–39.

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 16
GEORGE ROUSSEAU

Medicine and the body

Alexander Pope’s body, as most readers know, was severely deformed.

Although he was trampled by a cow as a child of eight in a Berkshire field,
as his sister reported (Anecdotes, i, pp. 3–4), his deformity sprang from an
incurable tuberculosis of the spine, later called Pott’s Disease, which pro-
duces curvature of the spine and a markedly humped back. By the time he
entered puberty, he began to shrink rather than grow tall, eventually dwin-
dling to no more than four and a half feet tall as an adult, and the fact that
one leg was significantly shorter than the other caused him to develop his
hump back. The protrusion was painful as well as noticeable, and in time
forced him to walk with a stick (cane) and to wear specially fitted shoes. The
accident he sustained as a child may also have contributed to genital diffi-
culties he suffered from throughout his life: difficulty in urinating, painful
testicles, and urethral pain so bad that he begged the surgeons for frequent
operations to ease it. He also suffered from chronically poor eyesight, occa-
sionally so acute that his parents and early doctors erroneously attributed his
curved spine and humped back to excessive reading that wrecked his eyes.1
Voltaire epitomized him as “protuberant before and behind” and Pope him-
self later claimed that his “Crazy Constitution” had amounted to “this long
Disease, my Life.”2 He was prone to quipping, often disparagingly, about his
miserable body which he likened to vermin and other small animals (espe-
cially to spiders and toads), and on one such occasion he referred to himself
anonymously as “a lively little Creature, with long Arms and Legs: a Spider
is no ill Emblem of him.”3 He was so precocious in boyhood – a prodigy –
and composing such remarkable poetry by the age of ten that he seemed to
take on the attributes of adulthood long before he arrived there, and if the
medicine of his time had been more advanced he might have been declared
a victim of progeria (the malady of growing old while still juvenescent).
The fact that “Little Alexander,” as he was often called, was also a
Catholic, persecuted when grown for his religion – as Catholics then rou-
tinely were – and a lifelong bachelor (marriage would have been difficult

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for someone in his condition and its lack shrank his heart), further added
to his perception that his was a life endured in pain caused primarily by his
monstrous body. But as he matured two or three images of his body began
to form – as monstrous, grotesque, even freakish – which (understandably)
produced anger as his “ruling passion” (as he would call these in An Essay
on Man). Eventually he grasped that these views were not as monolithically
straightforward as they seemed: a sick body in a sound mind. The noctur-
nal phantasmagoria in Canto iv of The Rape of the Lock (53–4) in which
Belinda imagines abortive freak creatures when “Men prove with Child, as
pow’rful Fancy works, | And Maids turn’d Bottels, call aloud for Corks” –
would not be far off the mark as a description of his psychomachia (warfare)
between the parts of his body that impelled the world to mock him as “a
caricature of a man.”
It is unthinkable that such a “Carcase” (as he metonymically often referred
to his deformed body) would not take a psychological toll on his selfhood
and literary identity. Yet if in one region of his mind he was a monstrous
creature of the “vermin spider kind,” in another he was the seducer enticing
and tempting the very creatures who had spurned him. The seducer lies at the
opposite end of the spectrum from the monster: adroit in arts of persuasion
and smooth in tempting his victims, he slyly coerces them to conjoin with
him despite apparent monstrosity. Yet the freakish monster who fails to
learn the seducer’s tricks is far worse off, and such a fate seemed to Pope,
even if unconsciously so, a destiny far worse than the one he had actually
inherited. Furthermore, if seducers were proverbially male (the warrior or
prince carrying off his bride), temptresses were female, as Eve the “mother
of men” had been; and Pope came to construe himself, especially his literary
persona, in this role as temptress who had disguised his gender to thrill in
joys denied to him, as had the historical Eloisa in Eloisa to Abelard and the
biographical Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (“Sapho”) who Pope imagines
saying “I too could write, and I am twice as tall” in the Epistle to Arbuthnot
(103). Yet no matter how direly Pope found himself represented by these
illicit temptresses, he also enjoyed friendships with other women – young
and old – which were playful, anything but seductive in this illicit way. In
this sense, he managed to remain energized by curbing his impulses to excess.
Even so, it is hard to imagine that in his friendships with women he waxed
amnesiac about his dwarfish size and protuberances.
He was far too young to be suffering from enlarged prostate syndrome
when the problems in his genitals began to affect him. These were likely
to have been the fallout of the time he was possibly trampled by the cow,
and as he grew into manhood they complicated his ill health. First, he had
difficulty passing water, then pains in the kidney area of his back, and was

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finally told that his genital apparatus (probably the shaft of the penis itself)
was in some way compromised. He appealed to the best surgeons, especially
the illustrious William Cheselden, who operated on him numerous times and
were able to alleviate the discomfort and helped him edit Shakespeare (see
Corr, ii, pp. 100, 106, 177; v, p. 78). But the symbolic fallout was more
consequential than the medical for a poet searching for literary identity in
an era when the reins of gender identification were tightening. And by the
time he set out to translate the Homeric epics in 1713–15 as a young man
of just twenty-five (even before his romantic advances were rejected by Lady
Mary), he had recognized that no matter how famous a poet he had by then
become the die was cast: deformed and dwarfed, unmarried and Catholic,
he would not be able to prove his manhood in reproductive ways. Small
wonder that he resorted to defenses located primarily in the pen: “let me
draw the last pen for freedom” (Epilogue to the Satires, i, 3).
The Pope who draws the “last pen,” as it were, is not merely comment-
ing on his commitment to moral truth and the integrity of the honest man,
but also on the pen as metonymy for selfhood, masculinity, and penis – the
components of identity about which he was sensitive, even nervous. It is of
course difficult to construct a case for symbolic genitals as signifiers in con-
trast to anatomic ones: anyway the former is almost impossible to prove.4
Yet no psychoanalytic training is required (not that I advocate it retrospec-
tively anyway) to recognize the metonymy of the one for the other, especially
in the cases of patients (Pope, like Coleridge, was a lifelong patient). During
his lifetime endless stories circulated about his forlorn escapades to prove
his masculinity – not just the outrageous one Cibber recounts about a visit
Pope made to a London brothel,5 but others in the various homosocial clubs
to which he belonged, including the Scriblerians – and even if these exag-
gerate his attempts he himself revealed to his mostly male correspondents
(John Gay, Swift, the good Dr. Arbuthnot) to what degree he was a “soft
kind of man” nervous about his masculinity.6 Dwarfdom and deformity had
combined to produce a series of other literal infirmities, which, in turn, took
a toll on his romantic aspirations. Maynard Mack has captured the essence
of this emotional toll when demonstrating how it shrunk his heart. If Pope
were homosexual (in our sense), which I strongly doubt, his deformity would
have impaired him anyway from acting this role to any degree: physically in
view of his various body defects, psychologically because he was so fraught
about his masculinity, no matter how much it was commodified among his
contemporaries.
Pope was not of course the only writer in British literary history to turn
his “pen” on the world, no matter how angry that life’s lottery had dealt
him such a physique; and it is additionally simplistic to think this was his

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only reason for lashing out: his war with the dunces also had undeniable
esthetic and intellectual bases. Yet it is also unimaginable that he would
have developed as he did, personally and poetically, without “this little,
tender, crazy Carcase [sic],” as William Wycherley and others among his
early homosocial set often referred to his physical body (Corr, i, p. 55).
Jonathan Goldberg has traced the way the human hand has acted as a sur-
rogate penis for certain writers since the Renaissance and Raymond Stephan-
son has expanded this view to book-length describing how it also incorpo-
rated Pope’s masculinity and creativity. “I can think of no author before
Pope whose poetic stature, reputation, and accomplishment were publicly
imaged as questions about his privy members, with public speculation about
the actual conditions of his yard.” Speculations about a poet’s penis – yard –
may seem odd in our era of sanitized discourse that does not give offence,
yet in the Restoration and early Augustan world in which Pope matured,
the codes of both the male imagination and the sexualised body were vastly
different from what they have become today. As Stephanson continues to
comment, “although we [today] are more accustomed, perhaps, to think-
ing of this gifted hunchback as sadly unique or unfortunately deformed, in
fact Pope’s dwarfed body and literary fame became emblems of the new
marketplace of letters.”7
Pope had indeed been novel here and firmly within this tradition, yet he
could have triumphed over his deformity and turned bodily defect around
into partial benignity, as does Clifford Chatterley in D. H. Lawrence’s Lady
Chatterley’s Lover (1928) and the many Catholic clerics (several personally
known to Pope) forbidden by doctrine to marry. Besides, whereas Pope raged
against the dunces – his “warfare on earth” – other deformed persons in his
own time turned their defect to virtue: used it to endear themselves, marry,
and bear children. Pope’s inescapable deformity, on the other hand, intrigued
his contemporaries to the point of obsession – even Edmund Curll’s new print
shop in Covent Garden was called “Pope’s Head” – and predisposed him
to a way of life that relied on surrogate strengths, especially creative outlets
in poetry and the arts of drawing, gardening, and landscape architecture.
And it had the additional consequence of causing him to draw close to other
literary bachelors, notably Swift and John Gay, but also many other older
married males – John Caryll and William Wycherley – with whom he existed
in a state of near Carlylean hero worship.8 It also motivated him simultane-
ously into a state where he used his ill health to endear himself to older men
while launching into hyperactivity in fields other than poetry: architecture,
landscape gardening, and grottology. The pride propelling him to vent his
spleen against the dunces was rarely at stake in these other activities. The
main points here, easy to overlook or trivialize, are firstly that Pope labored

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under two physical deformities – dwarfism with its protrusions and, later
on, a genital dysfunction – and, secondly, that he was unable to contain his
rage arising from perceived assaults to his manhood. What his contempo-
raries often expressed as prurient interest in his body, he construed as attack
of one kind or another: if not for the suggestion that physical deformity
correlated to inner moral defect, then for the sense he derived that insult to
his body was tantamount to the spurning of his character and the quality
of his poetry itself. The result was a pitch of rage that would have con-
cerned the psychoanalysts of his age had there been any. As Allen Tate, the
modern American poet, has so poignantly asked: “What . . . rage between
his teeth?”9 What rage indeed? The subject is no longer easily addressed in
a milieu (ours) when terror of every type, it seems, compels us to mediate
rage culturally and reduce it to the realm of the “appropriate” to render it
bearable.10 The astonishing development is that Pope should have been so
self-conscious about the implications of assault to his physical body as to
coin lines that echo far beyond their literal truth for full poetic effect: “Let
me draw the last pen for freedom.”11 This was not merely the literal “pen”
in his hand.
Deformity and heightened rage exist in proximity in the life and works
of Pope, even if they continue to surprise his readers by the number of bio-
graphical sites from which they are absent. For example, his associations in
gardening (the world of Bathurst and Cirencester) and landscape architec-
ture (Kent and Burlington) – all those men with whom he interacted when
consulting “the Genius of the place” – were pre-eminently decorous if also
largely homosocial, and it is hard to imagine that the same “Pope” who
advised these figures also lashed out wildly at the dunces. A modern psycho-
analyst might purport that Pope, having channeled most of his ego-strength
into his pen – especially the perfection of his couplet art – struck whenever
his niche there was imperiled. Outrage had of course been a main compo-
nent of satiric inspiration ever since the Homeric bards sang of “the wrath
of Achilles” and the Roman satirist Juvenal grew indignant over the moral
vices he found widespread in his Rome. Pope in the state of blinding rage
recognized that his body as well as mind was implicated. Spinal tuberculosis
had not merely removed him from the ranks of star-studded manhood; it
also configured him for public consumption – especially by his detractors –
as impotent and lame: as he himself pathetically conceded to a friend, “I
live like an Insect, in hope of reviving with the Spring.” Or, as he con-
fessed to Lord Bathurst, “I do not think I shall ever enjoy any health four
days together, for the remaining Sand I have to run” (Corr, iv, 499; ii,
525). Even the reliable Samuel Johnson reported in his Lives of the Poets
(1779–81) that “his legs were so slender that he enlarged their bulk with

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three pair of stockings.”12 Hardly a “Carcase” whose physique was cause

for celebration.
Nevertheless, what commands attention is not that Pope was aware of
his bodily states but that he should have grasped them as commercial and
marketing assets despite the personal injury and insult they gave him. As a
lifelong patient (from youth he artfully manipulated his near-invalidism so
as to render it attractive to his homosocial set of older men) he forged a
hypochondriacal style of life capable of enthralling his curious contempo-
raries – the body as the site of fascination in its own right had made vast
strides since the English Restoration. Hence it is not excessive to contend
that Pope’s contemporaries were as curious about his body – his afflicted
body in pain – as they were about his sequestration in Twickenham. And it
falsifies the evidence to think Pope merely monitored his bodily signs and vig-
ilantly commented upon their aberrations in his expansive correspondence,
as if merely a compulsive hypochondriac. Patientdom and near-invalidism
notwithstanding, as his best biographer has claimed (Life, p. 153), he also
lived in an era of revolutionary theories about the body – from static to ner-
vous and fluid – which piqued his contemporaries to ascertain how a “poet’s
body” differed from theirs, or, you could say, how the new poetics of sub-
jectivity were incorporating bodily states, for the two were interconnected
in the collective Augustan mindset of Pope’s maturity.
If Pope’s was an Age of John Locke for the association of primary sen-
sations into higher abstract ideas, his was also an Age of Thomas Willis
(1621–1675) for the first modern view of the body as a nervous self. Willis’s
revolutionary brain theory placed the anatomical nerves at the centre of
the human frame and guided its motions.13 As Willis wrote, “it will plainly
appear that I have not trod the paths of footsteps of others, nor repeated what
hath been before told.”14 Locke was the generation’s philosopher of mind
par excellence; but Dr Willis was the modern philosopher of the body, as
William Wotton in Reflections upon Antient and Modern Learning (1697)
and others acknowledged, having rendered it an object for experimenta-
tion and verbalization. Willis, neurologist and psychologist, taught that the
brain and nervous system preside over mind. For a poet of selfhood like Pope,
whose infirm body was paradoxically the source of both pain and power,
blemish and asset, the “doctors” of medicine had taught him much, not least
about the words needed to describe his own body. No wonder he courted
them avidly, from youth to maturity: if not surgeon William Cheselden then
“nerve doctor” George Cheyne whose Essay of Health Pope seems to have
read around 1725.15 He had lived among the doctors, and his body, far more
than his mind, preoccupied him for the range of its paradoxes: his “long Dis-
ease, my Life” may have been caused by his “crazy Carcase”, but in time

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he also realized how anatomic difference converted to curiosity, keeping his

flame alive with the reading public. It is thus simplistic to think that what
Pope lacked in the groin he more than compensated for in the head. The
truth is more complex and disturbing: he promoted himself as a cultural
icon whose poetic identity was based, in significant part, on anatomical dif-
ference. No wonder then that he read widely in those subjects – anatomy
and physiology – as the great passages about the human passions (“Each
vital humour which should feed the whole, | Soon flows to this, in body
and in soul”) demonstrate in the second epistle of An Essay on Man (lines
139–40).
Pope’s knowledge of Richard Blackmore’s theories of “nervous gout” in
the Critical Dissertation upon the Spleen (1725) and Discourses on the Gout
(1726) arose, in part, from embittered feuds with the doctor-author about
poetic art. The acclaim for Blackmore’s works shocked Pope (Creation,
which had drawn on the new nervous anatomy, was widely read in its day)
and sensitized him to the degree that views other than his own held sway.
He was certainly aware of, and had probably read, parts of The English
Malady (1733) by the “inimitable Doctor Cheyne” (Pope’s own phrase). A
best-seller in 1733 just as Pope was composing the last epistle of his Essay on
Man and various of his Imitations of Horace, The English Malady explained
the anatomical nerves to laymen and demonstrated how physical bodies –
even Pope’s – became nervously aroused. Cheyne surveyed the spectrum
from arousal and rapture to “low spirits” leading to melancholy and “self-
murder.” All, according to him, were nervously determined. Sans nerves, nei-
ther cognition nor memory served (the brain’s directions obeyed only when
the nerves functioned), let alone the states of high heroic passion (anger,
jealousy, lust, revenge) found in epic and – inversely – in mock-epic.
Yet, even before Cheyne’s books became bestsellers in the 1720s and 1730s,
Pope had versified the nerves, making it plain that the Willisian revolution
filtered down to his gaze. And if he could have hung on few more months
after his death in May 1744 he would have seen how Mark Akenside –
judged a prodigious talent by Pope – further elevated the role of nerves in the
imaginative process in the Pleasures of Imagination (1744). That same year
John Armstrong stressed their importance in “the art of preserving health”
in his long poem of this title, as did Malcolm Flemyng two years later when
he composed an epic in hexameters on neurotic disorders.16 These poets
of the 1740s could not have focused so vividly on the nerves if the body
had not already been culturally mediated and sufficiently popularized. Pope
tapped into the body’s new commodification before they did, partly for selfish
reasons having to do with his public persona.

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Pope’s poetry captures the range of these nervous tropes. “Rapture warms
the mind” in An Essay on Criticism (236) in just the way Willis had described
in his brain treatises: as heating up the vital spirits that expand the nerves.
And in The Odyssey it will warm Ulysses’ “raptured soul” too (i, 558), as it
will “the Happy Man” of Windsor-Forest – and equally the poet who finds
his soul possessed by the nine Muses and his imagination fired in “Raptures”
(259–60). Conversely, negative “rapture” describes Bayes’s state of mind as
he (the King of Dulness, Colley Cibber in the later version) lies in Dulness’s
lap at the opening of Book iii of The Dunciad:

Him close she curtain’d round with Vapours blue,

And soft besprinkles with Cimmerian dew.
Then raptures high the seat of Sense o’erflow.
(iii, 4–5)

Rapture is the word Pope chooses when Helen follows Achilles at their
climactic moment of love in The Iliad:

Him Helen follow’d slow with bashful Charms,

And clasp’d the looming Hero in her Arms.
While these to Love’s delicious Rapture yield . . .
(iii, 557–9)

Rapture is also rife in Pope’s Odyssey, as when Ulysses – far from Troy – first
sees the coast of Greece (“With rapture oft the verge of Greece reviews”), or
when Alcinous’ palace and kingdom are described as beyond all expectation
(“Th’ unwonted scene surprize and rapture drew”), or when Ulysses’ old
nurse Eurycleia first sees the great hero after he lands at Ithaca at the opening
of Book xxiii:

Then to the Queen, as in repose she lay,

The Nurse with eager rapture speeds her way!17

For good reason Pope sustains the use of “rapture” in Book xxiii more
than anywhere else in his Homeric translations, despite the frequency of its
appearances there as well. “Rapture” is a favourite word of Pope’s, used
dozens of times in his poetry, most often to describe heightened anatomical
states leading to passion and imagination.
He himself was no stranger to “enraptured” nervous states and the roman-
tic energizing they brought to his own verse, even if that state was not entirely
“romantic” in the way some Pope critics have decreed. Looking back on his
literary career in 1737, he nostalgically reminisced on the memory of com-
posing poetry in the flush of manhood, when words rhapsodically flowed

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because his imagination was fully fired up: “You grow correct that once with
Rapture writ” (Epilogue to the Satires, i, 3; TE, iv, p. 297). Such “rapture”
incorporates the poet’s own bodily states as well as his firebrand imagination
working at high temperature. Willis had explained how these moments arise:
“The brain doth produce a type of fire which transfixes the imagination.”18
During maturity and senescence this nervous “fire” (pictured as fluid flow-
ing through hollow tubes) flickers, as it did for Pope. The most enraptured
creative states occur when the nerves are “taut and tonic”19 – the words
are Cheyne’s – when the brain concentrates attentively without the slightest
dissipation, and ruddy animal spirits flow quickly and regularly rather than
feebly or haphazardly in their tubes, as they would in the “hey-go-mad”
Tristram Shandy’s nerves, the erratic flow of which had been the primary
cause of his downfall:

– you have all, I dare say, heard of the animal spirits, as how they are transfused
from father to son, &c., &c. – and a great deal to that purpose: – Well, you
may take my word, that nine parts in ten of a man’s sense or his nonsense,
his successes and miscarriages in this world depend upon their motions and
activity, and the different tracks and trains you put them into, so that when
they are once set a-going, whether right or wrong, ’tis not a halfpenny matter, –
away they go cluttering like hey-go-mad.20

Cheyne and other “nerve doctors,” building on Willis’s legacy, had explained
how these “high imaginative states” occur. When Pope experienced them, in
“rapture writ,” it consoled him to think he was not so completely deformed
after all, but free to create as other great poets had been; masculine and
without the anxieties and tensions that plagued him throughout the “long
disease, my life.” He could imagine there was nothing flaccid or effeminate,
soft or weak, in his body, let alone lacking the masculinity he sought. In
rapture he had produced great poetry, much of it rhapsodic – “warm and
romantic” – even if he did not formally label his works rhapsodies.21
Pope did not compose in trances, nor was his imagination organically
“esemplastic” in the way Coleridge describes in the Biographia Literaria
(1817). Nevertheless, Pope’s poetry demonstrates why he, and some of his
modern critics, have detected in him anticipations of romanticism: if not
of the rhapsodic glow associated with Romantic poets – the Byrons and
Coleridges who valued Pope’s poetry so highly – then not entirely alien to
the enraptured lyricism of the poets of the 1740s.
Pope’s attitudes to contemporary medical theory were not uniformly
enthusiastic. He exposed the practices of many medical doctors and lam-
basted their theories. His verses abound in blistering assaults on their defec-
tive logic and limited wit. Even author-doctors – Garth, Mead, Blackmore,

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Hartley – are often butterflies on Pope’s satiric wheel, as much for their
petty “projects” and risible “experiments” as for their personal pedantry
and puffery. Pope’s critique of the new scientific knowledge extended to
the “Newton craze” of his era (“And shew’d a N e w to n as we shew
an Ape,” he chided his contemporaries in An Essay on Man, ii, 34).22 It
nevertheless goes too far to think Pope’s satiric treatment of medicine the
predominant one. He possessed more understanding of medicine than sci-
ence, as any lifelong patient would, and was well aware of recent theo-
ries of the nervous body: especially those conducing towards a poet’s def-
inition of himself. He had felt comfortable with most doctors: routinely
taken to them as a child, operated on by them for his genital afflictions,
and often relying on them – as friends – for “sober advice,” none more
so than the wise Dr. Arbuthnot, rewarded by Pope with a great poem
named for him. Pope may not have lived in the houses of doctors, as did
Coleridge for many years in the Highgate home of Dr James Gilman, but
he kept au courant of their comings and goings “in the Town,” a further
reason he facilely refers to them, especially in The Dunciad.23 Medicine –
the science that theorizes the body in healthy and pathological states –
was the one branch of natural philosophy Pope had good reason to cultivate.
Pope’s adulthood in 1725–44 coincided with the decades when the medical
arts were being culturally mediated: first, owing to a thirst for new knowledge
among the growing reading classes; and then in response to the Restoration
paradigm shift in the conception of the body itself – the latter specially as the
result of Willis’s nervous legacy, but also in response to then contemporary
anatomists charting the new nervous body along its fault lines from brain
to the smallest nerve. This was an organic body in which each part – each
motion – responded to the other. As such it also gave rise to new verbal
possibilities for explication, and versifying, of the body connections. The
old Galenic model of humors, determined by solids and fluids, was gone; a
new body arose constructed along nervous fault lines.
The anatomical revolution took a toll in diagnosis and also opened up pos-
sibilities for mind-body interaction. Mind and body were being “nervously
defined,” as Willis and, later, Cheyne claimed.24 As they were, it became dif-
ficult to label diagnoses, like Pope’s, as located entirely in the one or other.
Diagnosis in Pope’s case is difficult to assess in its original context: he was
certainly deformed and impaired in the ways described but psychologically
speaking it is more difficult to affix a just diagnosis. Despite chronic ailments
in addition to his two impairments – dwarfism and genital dysfunction – he
was hypochondriac in some degree without being (in our sense) depressive or
suicidal. His heart was romantically starved, and suspicion – as well as the
lust to engage in literary warfare – dominated his psyche to a degree that it

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does not go too far to classify him (diagnosis again) as paranoid despite the
word not having been invented at that time.
The concept of paranoia that forms a cornerstone of Freudian psycho-
analysis was not available in Pope’s time except as extrapolations made
from actions judged as prone to excessive combat. Pope certainly cultivated
enemies, as studies of The Dunciad have long documented. Yet a psycho-
analysis of his life still appears gratuitous because treatment is irrelevant. If
the facts of Pope’s life are gathered and interpreted, as they have been by
biographers from Samuel Johnson to Maynard Mack, we can see how Pope’s
self-constructed poetic identity played itself out: marginalizing and isolating
him in childhood; sensitizing him after a life of embattled fracas; isolating him
into volitional seclusion while concurrently energizing him to compose great
poetry; annihilating the possibility of his making peace with the “dunces”
or forgiving them for transgressions made to his “person”, while concur-
rently inspiring him to keep composing in retirement. When the first major
revaluation of Pope’s poetry occurred in the second decade of the nineteenth
century, its participants (including Byron, Hazlitt, and William Lisle Bowles)
asked questions about his couplet art.25 They also wondered what weight to
give to his enemies and feuds, Pope’s “warfare on earth.” Extreme displays
of cantankerous behaviour in life and literature are viewed negatively in our
era, often as the sign of maladjustment. This may be a further reason why
our generation has been so recalcitrant to reassess Pope’s literal body – his
“Crazy Constitution” – and speculate about the consequences of the new
anatomy on his art.

NOTES
1. The classic treatment of his medical case history is Marjorie H. Nicolson and
G. S. Rousseau, “This Long Disease, My Life”: Alexander Pope and the Sciences
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968). Mack claims (Life, p. 153) that
“the chances are good that it [Pott’s Disease] was contracted during infancy
from the milk of Mary Beach his nurse; less probably, from cow’s milk,” but this
cannot have been the case as Pott’s disease cannot be transmitted from human
to human.
2. Voltaire, Oeuvres, lxii (Paris, 1819–1825), p. 157; TE, iv, p. 105.
3. Pope, The Guardian no. 92 (26 June 1713), in Prose, i, p. 125.
4. Raymond Stephanson has made a strong case in The Yard of Wit: Male Creativity
and Sexuality 1650–1750 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004).
5. Colley Cibber, A Letter from Mr. Cibber, to Mr. Pope (London: W. Lewis, 1742),
pp. 47–9.
6. See Stephanson, Yard of Wit, pp. 1–9, 25–92.
7. See Jonathan Goldberg, Shakespeare’s Hand (Minneapolis: University of Min-
nesota Press, 2003); Stephanson, Yard of Wit, pp. 23–4.

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8. Bachelordom was common in his era and should not be interpreted as the coverup
for an illicit sexuality; the point here is not merely the apparent homosociability of
these bachelor-writers but their affinities and emotional ties they had developed
in relying on one another for moral support.
9. Allen Tate, Mr Pope and Other Poems (New York: Minton, Balch & Company,
1928).
10. For Pope’s “rage” see G. S. Rousseau in The Enduring Legacy: Alexander Pope
Tercentenary Essays, ed. G. S. Rousseau and P. Rogers (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1988), pp. 199–239.
11. For the full range of Pope’s poetic images of pens, quills, and other writing
instruments see Stephanson, Yard of Wit, p. 285 (index entry).
12. Johnson, LOP, iii, p. 197.
13. Willis’s best-known treatise on the brain, Cerebri Anatome (London, 1664), was
translated into English by Samuel Pordage and contained plates by Sir Christo-
pher Wren; see Thomas Willis, The Anatomy of the Brain and Nerves (Montreal:
McGill University Press, 1965). The case for Dr Willis in relation to Pope has
most recently been made by G. S. Rousseau in Nervous Acts: Essays on Litera-
ture, Culture and Sensibility (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2004).
14. Willis, Anatomy, p. 235.
15. For the full range of reading, see Nicolson and Rousseau, Disease, pp. 55–72.
16. Malcolm Flemyng, Neuropathia; sive de morbis hypochondriacis et hystericis
[The pathway of the nerves, or hypochondriacal and hysterical disorders] (York,
1746).
17. See respectively Odyssey, iv, 697; vi, 179; xxiii, 2.
18. William Feindel, ed., Thomas Willis: The Anatomy of the Brain and Nerves:
Tercentenary Edition, 2 vols. (Montreal: McGill University Press, 1965), vol. i,
p. 123.
19. George Cheyne, The English Malady (London: G. Strahan, 1733), p. 6.
20. See Melvyn New, ed., The Florida Edition of the Works of Laurence Sterne:
Tristram Shandy, 2 vols. (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1978–84),
vol. i, pp. 1–2.
21. For “rhapsodic aesthetics” see Pat Rogers, “Shaftesbury and the Aesthetics of
Rhapsody,” British Journal of Aesthetics 12 (1972): pp. 244–57. The rhapsody
as a poetic topos flourished in this era although often as a satiric subspecies.
22. Newton, who was heavily indebted to both Willis and Locke for his bodily
metaphors, wrote no medical works but drew heavily on the language of neural
transmission in his Opticks (London: Royal Society, 1704).
23. For the range of medical references in his poetry see U. C. Knopflmacher, “The
Poet as Physician: Pope’s Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot,” Modern Language Quarterly
31 (1970): pp. 440–9.
24. Cheyne, The English Malady, p. 6.
25. See William Hazlitt, “Pope, Lord Byron and Mr. Bowles,” London Magazine
(June 1821), reprinted in The Works of William Hazlitt, ed. A. R. Waller and A.
Glover, 13 vols. (London: Dent, 1902–6), vol. xi, pp. 456–508.

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 17
LAURA BROWN

Pope and the other

The “other” has become a prominent theme in literary critical analysis. At

the social and political level, its currency has been the result of two signifi-
cant social and political events in the twentieth century: the clashes between
colonizer and colonized in the 1940s and 50s, and the development of the
new feminist movement in the 1970s. The rise of post-colonial studies and
of feminist theory – the intellectual counterparts of these events – have pro-
foundly influenced Anglo-American literary criticism of the late twentieth
century. The “other” is the calling card of these critical paradigms. In rela-
tion to Western European literature, the concern with the “other” leads
primarily to an attention to the representation of women or of indigenous
or non-European peoples in literary texts. For instance, the passage on the
“poor Indian” in the first epistle of Alexander Pope’s Essay on Man stands
out as an example of the status of native Americans in the early-eighteenth
century imagination:

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, nor 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.
(i, 99–112)

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This passage is an encyclopedia of intersecting perspectives on indigenous

peoples – a compendium of ideas of the “other” as understood through the
modern critique of colonialism. Most generally, for contemporary readers
the image of the “poor Indian” would bring to mind the sight of selected
“natives” displayed in London and other European metropolitan centers as
emissaries and “shows,” popular curiosities that attracted growing audiences
throughout the eighteenth century.1 The currency of this image in literature
is an indication of the visibility of the native “other” in these contexts. In
addition, the image of the “poor Indian” would echo the representation
of indigenous peoples in contemporary travel literature, a major publish-
ing phenomenon with an extensive popular following in this period.2 These
travel narratives also often included proto-ethnographic accounts of the cus-
toms and manners of the people, in the same way that Pope here chooses
to describe a quaint belief in canine afterlife as a peculiarity of his “poor
Indian.”
More specifically, the “poor Indian” is the object of an evaluative reversal
here, in which the “poor,” the “untutored,” the uncivilized, and the “simple”
human being is elevated to a position of special privilege, because he has
direct access to a “natural” faith that European Christianity is implicitly
denied. In this aspect, the passage evokes the long and complex debate
about natural and revealed religion that developed in the seventeenth century,
partially in response to the encounter with indigenous peoples around the
world – peoples whose lack of access to the teachings of Christ, some thought,
should not exclude them from salvation.
Furthermore, in suggesting that “proud Science” has led Europeans to
“stray” from a more natural nobility, the description of this “poor Indian”
points toward the idea of the “noble savage,” which is most coherently
defined by Rousseau later in the century in his Second Discourse (1756).
By the second half of the eighteenth century, the sympathies of the savage
or natural man, uncorrupted by civilization, become a model for European
sensibility. The ironies of Pope’s passage capture some of the complexities
of this usage of indigenous peoples in the construction of European ideals
of conduct and value: Pope’s Indian is both admirable and pathetic. But
the ironies inherent in this passage run even deeper. The Indian – a “slave”
because of the practices of European colonialism – is also used implicitly
to praise British imperialism. The allusions to slavery, “fiends,” and “thirst
for gold” that cause him to wish for a “safer” and “happier” fate, point
directly to the cruelties of Spanish colonialism. For the British, Spain was
considered to be the heartless and bloodthirsty colonial power, fortunately
superseded in the eighteenth century by the benevolent, civilizing forces of
British imperialism, which were coming to dominate the globe. According

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to this passage, to the extent that the “poor Indian” has truly suffered at the
hands of the Spanish, his suffering is a testimony to the historical superiority
of British global power.
Pope’s Indian also raises a question about the relationship between Euro-
peans and non-Europeans, and between human and non-human beings –
a question fundamental to the European experience of the encounter with
the “other” in the eighteenth century. The “poor Indian” foolishly, or inno-
cently, thinks that his dog will accompany him to the heaven that his natural
religion promises. The implied equality of human and non-human being, and
even the specific question of whether dogs might accompany their masters or
mistresses to heaven, are prominent topics in the debate that accompanied
the rise of the life sciences in this period, in which the clear separation of
man from beast gave way to a multifaceted discussion of differences and
similarities between and among species. In keeping with these discussions,
the idea of the chain of being – the influential classical and neoclassical
conceptualization of the hierarchical ordering of the universe – was modi-
fied to include an increasingly fluid interpretation by which the gradations
that separated beings on the chain were so minute or so gradual as to call
distinctions into question, and elaborations upon the new systems of bio-
logical classification provided for hybrid creatures posited to stand in the
interstices between the distinct classes that those systems defined.3 The place
of each being was thus potentially open to question in ways that could tran-
scend hierarchy, or redefine it. One dimension of this discussion was the
species debate, a significant, formative event in the development of mod-
ern ideas of racial inferiority, which raised the question of whether humans
are divided into distinct species – and whether some species of human are
inferior to others.4 Meanwhile, the rise of pet-keeping in the eighteenth cen-
tury encouraged some Europeans to believe that their companion animals
were possessed of human traits, such as faithfulness, and inspired specula-
tion about whether lapdogs had an afterlife.5 The equality of the Indian and
his dog thus signals a wide context of contemporary thought in which the
indigenous non-European human being plays a major role, as inspiration
and object.
In short, Pope’s “poor Indian” demonstrates in a compact form the depth
and breadth of the impact of the “other” on the eighteenth-century imag-
ination. This richly developed portrait condenses a range of contempo-
rary experiences arising from the historical situation of Pope’s poem in
early-eighteenth century England: the visibility of the non-European in the
metropolitan centers of Europe, the prominence of representations of cul-
tural encounter through travel and ethnographic writing, the inversion of
the traditional hierarchy of the civilized over the “savage,” the questioning

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of the assumptions of revealed religion, the contexts of colonial exploitation

and slavery around the globe, the instabilities proposed by and within the
systems generated by the new life sciences, and the rise of a new kind of
relationship with and treatment of “companion animals.” Pope’s text at this
point presents an integrated representation of a distinctive imaginative expe-
rience that we could define as a rich and pervasive engagement with alterity –
an engagement that privileges the unfamiliar, the non-civilized, and the non-
European, and that simultaneously evokes an inversion of traditional hier-
archy, a destabilization of systems of order or continuity, and a questioning
of fundamental assumptions of value and meaning. This engagement with
alterity is one of the defining characteristics of the imaginative works of
modernity.
Following the theoretical paradigms provided by post-colonial studies
or feminist theory, literary critics have tended to understand this engage-
ment with alterity exclusively in terms of the representation of “other”
human beings. In the case of Pope, this perspective on “otherness” has gen-
erated, over the last two decades, a persistent and influential new focus
on the alien, monstrous, disfigured, disabled, and especially the female in
Pope’s works. Thus many recent critical studies of Pope have sought to
explicate his representations of women, especially in The Dunciad and To
a Lady. They see anxieties about female fecundity, feminized modernity,
and gender definition in various of his works; they explore Pope’s rela-
tionships with and literary treatment of historical women, notably Lady
Mary Wortley Montagu and Eliza Haywood; they track issues of monstros-
ity, disability, and bodily grotesquerie from Pope’s own self-presentation to
his poetic corpus; and they uncover attitudes towards new world slavery
embedded within his works. The new Pope, by these lights, has a complex
or contradictory, anxious or subtly sympathetic, appropriative or repressed
relationship to women, marginalized individuals, and non-Europeans, and
his works reveal the various ways in which the crafted form of Augustan
verse depends upon the repression, incorporation, or irrepressibility of the
“other.”6
By now, the “other” is a very powerful tool for rereading Pope’s poetry, and
this tool has helped to highlight the prominence of alterity in his corpus. But
our perception of the prevalence and even the nature of alterity – in Pope’s
poetry and in eighteenth-century literary culture more broadly – is limited by
our primary category of analysis. The “other” is a habit of analysis that arises
from a powerful tradition within modern philosophy. Post-colonial studies
and feminist theory, especially as the latter is indebted to psychoanalysis,
have schooled Anglo-American literary critics in the study of race and gen-
der, and have trained us, in particular, to understand the engagement with

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alterity according to a rather rigorous epistemology that has its origins in

the post-enlightenment critique of reason. The Enlightenment claim for the
power and efficacy of reason led directly to a critique that took that power
seriously, as a problem in itself. Central to the post-Enlightenment critique
is the dichotomy between intelligence and its object, or between the knower
and the known. Is the world of objects a reflection of consciousness? Do
objects exist only as they are perceived by consciousness? These ideas were
pursued in the German tradition by Hegel, whose influence is felt directly
in modern post-colonial studies, and indirectly through the development of
subsequent social, economic, and psychoanalytic theory.
Hegel constructs a system of thought around the dialectical relation-
ship between subjective and objective, or between idea and nature. Self-
consciousness is defined by its relationship to the natural world, and in
particular by a relationship with another consciousness in that world, an
“other” whose recognition gives self-consciousness existence. This system
leads Hegel to the proposition of an inevitable struggle between two self-
consciousnesses, one of which becomes the master and the other the slave.
Marx, following Hegel, uses the subject/object dichotomy to develop the
concept of alienated labour. Under capitalism, the object world is beyond
the control of the world of men. The worker is estranged from his labour –
the object world that he himself creates. As a result he becomes alien to
himself and to other men; he becomes a slave of the object, because work
constitutes his means of subsistence and thus his being. The worker thus
estranges, or “others,” himself from himself.
Modern psychoanalytic theory, the other major influence on post-colonial
studies as well as on literary critical studies independently, brings a version of
the subject/object dichotomy to bear on the psyche, and on gender, focusing
on the constitution of the self in terms of the stages of its separation from
the objects that surround it, specifically the mother. Following and revising
Freud from a post-structuralist perspective, Lacan argues that the infant’s
separation from the mother generates the sense of “other” that is the neces-
sary precondition for the development of selfhood. Then, seeing itself in the
mirror, the child imagines that image of a coherent “other” as itself. In this
way the idea of a self is based on the projection of an “other,” which is a
precondition for the entrance into language and culture.
Thus we inherit the idea of the “other,” a term which has a complex his-
tory, but which we have come to use as a loosely constitutive category, con-
ceived in a human form, which gives identity, meaning, and even existence
to the subject, the knower, the master, the father, or the self. The “other” is
assumed to be ever present – behind, within, or beneath any representation

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of power, autonomy, or individual identity, and it is the task of the literary

critic to call attention to its presence or to explain its significance. Our use
of the “other” in literary critical analysis today reflects this broadly influen-
tial structure of thought. But the concept of the “other” shapes and limits
our approach, as well. Pope’s poetry can help us step beyond some of those
limits by providing a different model for our understanding of alterity – a
model based in the imaginative experience of the period of European his-
tory when familiarity and convention, systems of hierarchy and order, and
ideals of value and continuity were opened to revision and even revolution.
In fact, eighteenth-century European history is marked by multiple, over-
lapping “revolutions,” which shape its cultural productions. These changes
range from the bourgeois political “revolutions” of mid-seventeenth century
England and late eighteenth-century France, to the scientific “revolutions” of
Newton and Linnaeus in physics and biology, the financial “revolution” and
the rise of public credit and stock trading, the commercial “revolution” and
the establishment of an economy based on consumption and an expanding
retail market, and the rise of British imperialism and the corollary institu-
tionalization of slavery. No wonder that the representation of an experience
shaped by the encounter with the unfamiliar, the inversion of hierarchy,
and the destabilization of order and value should be a repeated feature of
eighteenth-century literary culture.
Pope’s works can help us see the scope of that experience of alterity, and to
understand that it is not restricted to the representation of the human form,
although the common usage of the term “other” suggests that it must be.
And eighteenth-century representations of alterity do not necessarily express
a relationship of subordination, although again the “other” leads us to expect
a dichotomy in which one side claims primacy over another. In Pope’s works
for instance, the “poor Indian” passage, in which alterity is depicted through
the figure of a subordinate human being, is only one of a range of modes of
alterity, or ways in which difference is imagined in this period. In order to
explore that range, and for the purpose of argument here, we can distinguish
four distinct modes. Though these are not restricted to the representation of
a human figure, they do generate effects that can be compared directly with
that of the “poor Indian” passage – an encounter with the unconventional,
the unfamiliar, or the non-European, which raises fundamental questions
about hierarchy, order, value, and meaning. If we let the “poor Indian”
stand for the first mode of alterity – the one that focuses on the human fig-
ure – we can then distinguish three other, separate modes expressive of the
same striking experience of alterity in Pope’s works. The second is spatial –
the representation of a landscape that is arranged, or colored in a

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way that directly challenges familiar structures of geographical order.

The third is rhetorical – a linguistic structure that sets up an infinite
regression, in which hierarchy is systematically repudiated. And the fourth is
existential – representations of character in which conventional notions of
identity are emptied of significance and replaced by an absence of being.
These four modes give us access to a repertory of approaches to alterity that
can deepen our understanding of the challenges to the conventional in Pope’s
works.
The most prominent example of the spatial mode – in which geography is
the object of defamiliarization – occurs in the harlequinade scene from Book
iii of The Dunciad:

Thence a new world to Nature’s laws unknown,

Breaks out refulgent, with a heav’n its own:
Another Cynthia her new journey runs,
And other planets circle other suns.
The forests dance, the rivers upward rise,
Whales sport in woods, and dolphins in the skies;
And last, to give the whole creation grace,
Lo! one vast Egg produces human race.
(B text, iii, 241–8)

The inverted landscape that this scene depicts opens another window into
the diverse experience of alterity for the eighteenth-century reader. In his
own note to this passage, Pope explains that this scene describes a stage
farce, a recent popular drama that utilized extravagant machinery to depict
a sorcerer’s magical creation of a “new world.” In the context of Pope’s
poem, this “new world” stands for the fundamental overturning of systems
of order and value – an overturning generated by the coming of Dulness,
the Queen of both emptiness and wild creation, who presides over the new,
commodified culture of a capitalized printing industry.
This revolution is repeatedly represented in The Dunciad as an unfamil-
iar landscape, a “new world” with a specifically geographical content. For
example, earlier in the poem, in the opening account of Dulness’s kingdom
in Book i, Pope describes the overturning of literary convention in the same
geographical terms:

She sees a Mob of Metaphors advance,

Pleas’d with the madness of the mazy dance;
How Tragedy and Comedy embrace;
How Farce and Epic get a jumbled race;
How Time himself stands still at her command,
Realms shift their place, and Ocean turns to land.

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Here gay Description Ægypt glads with show’rs,

Or gives to Zembla fruits, to Barca flow’rs;
Glitt’ring with ice here hoary hills are seen,
There painted vallies of eternal green.
In cold December fragrant chaplets blow,
And heavy harvests nod beneath the snow.
(B text, i, 67–78)

Like the “new world” of Book iii, this landscape is characterized by a shifting
movement of locations that should be still or stable, and by the inversion of
geographical hierarchies, in which “Ocean turns to land” or “Whales sport
in woods.”
Hierarchy is called into question in other ways as well in these land-
scapes. The allusion to the “new world” in the passage from Book iii is
connected to the implications of modern astronomy. The trope of “other
planets” and “other suns” specifically evokes the work of Galileo and the
effects of the telescope and astronomical observation on the contemporary
imagination. These images call traditional systems of astronomical order –
moon, stars, and sun – into question, at the same time that they proliferate
heavenly bodies – moons, “planets,” and “suns” – in a way that destabi-
lizes the singular supremacy of this world. And further, The Dunciad’s “new
world” would also serve as a specific evocation of the geographical “new
world” of the Americas, a focal point of imaginative engagement in this
period. In associating this inverted geography with the Americas, these pas-
sages suggest that that object of European colonial expansion presents a
landscape beyond familiar systems of order, where geographical relation-
ships are unpredictable, and exotic creatures – whales and dolphins – are
strangely displaced. Whales and dolphins themselves would have evoked
the new products of trade and global exploration, and popular accounts of
maritime travel and adventure.
Visually, both of these passages exploit a strong evocation of colour, and
of foreground and background. The visualization of “refulgent” moons and
stars, “glittering” ice, and “painted vallies” of a vivid green are central to
this attractive effect, as are the representations of the components of a wide
geographical panorama. In the passage from Book iii the scene shifts from
the “forests” here, to the “rivers” there, and to the “woods” and “skies” in
other distinct areas of the scene; in the passage from Book i, the highlighted
terms “Here” and “There” directly indicate the foreground and background
of a painted landscape. These passages are ekphrastic: they use language to
describe the “sister art” of painting. In these cases of ekphrasis, Pope’s poetry
depicts the familiar contemporary genre of landscape painting.

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Ekphrasis plays an important role in several of Pope’s major poems.7 For

instance, in his celebration of English imperialism, Windsor-Forest, ekphrasis
supplies the means by which England is located at the center of a growing
global empire. The poem uses a description of the landscape at the site of
Windsor Castle to launch and substantiate its extended encomium on the
pax Britannica. The opening lines render the effects of landscape painting:

Here Hills and Vales, the Woodland and the Plain,

Here Earth and Water seem to strive again . . .
Here waving Groves a checquer’d Scene display,
And part admit and part exclude the Day . . .
There, interspers’d in Lawns and opening Glades,
Thin Trees arise that shun each others Shades.
Here in full Light the russet Plains extend;
There wrapt in Clouds the blueish Hills ascend:
Ev’n the wild Heath displays her Purple Dies,
And ‘midst the Desart fruitful Fields arise,
That crown’d with tufted Trees and springing Corn,
Like verdant Isles the sable Waste adorn . . .
See Pan with Flocks, with Fruits Pomona crown’d,
Here blushing Flora paints th’enamel’d Ground,
Here Ceres’ Gifts in waving Prospect stand,
And nodding tempt the joyful Reaper’s Hand.
(11–40)

These lines from Windsor-Forest can be seen as a tame and orderly source
for the inverted geographies that appear in The Dunciad. Pope’s language
in this earlier poem depicts the foreground and background of a visualized
landscape with the same directives “here” and “there,” and the same vivid
images of a glittering “enamel’d Ground” and “verdant” fields that appear
in The Dunciad.
Pope’s ekphrasis in The Dunciad, then, takes up a set of images that are
directly derived from contemporary nationalist and imperialist rhetoric, and
that allude back to those familiar scenes and refigure them as an unfamiliar
“new world.” But the recasting of the ekphrastic representation of the fer-
tile landscape of Britain as a radically unfamiliar and inverted geography in
The Dunciad passages serves implicitly to destabilize the British landscape
itself. Looking back on Windsor-Forest from the The Dunciad, we can see
the strange features of the The Dunciad’s “new world” growing from hints
provided initially in the imagery of the conventional scene of British national-
ism. The displacement of land by ocean that we observed in the two Dunciad
passages is suggested in Windsor-Forest’s image of “Earth and Water” striv-
ing for their proper place. Meanwhile the picture of the “fruitful Fields”

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floating like islands in an ocean-like plain contributes further to the sugges-

tion of an implicit inversion even in the stable landscape of Windsor. The
climatic paradoxes in the The Dunciad passage – the showers in Egypt and
the fruits of Zembla – also seem anticipated in Windsor-Forest’s depiction
of “fruitful Fields” arising in an uninhabited “Desart.” Later in Windsor-
Forest, the description of the river Loddon – a tributary of the Thames that
stands for the triumphant power of British imperial expansion – contains
the same strange hints of inversion:

Oft in her Glass the musing Shepherd spies

The headlong Mountains and the downward Skies,
The watry Landskip of the pendant Woods,
And absent Trees that tremble in the Floods;
In the clear azure Gleam the Flocks are seen,
And floating Forests paint the Waves with Green.
Thro’ the fair Scene rowl slow the lingring Streams,
Then foaming pour along, and rush into the Thames.
(211–18)

Here again, the geography of England – still “painted” with the colours of
landscape art – has the same potential for a reversal of place, between ocean
and land (“watry Landskip,” “pendant Woods,” and “floating Forests”) as
that of Dulness’s “new world,” and it displays the same tendency toward
movement (“headlong,” trembling, or “rushing”) that is evident in the shift-
ing, jumbled, mazy, or dancing activity of The Dunciad’s geography. From
this perspective, even Pope’s most conventional landscape painting seems
slightly strange. In fact, for Pope, the depiction of a geographical setting
apparently carries in itself the potential for the evocation of inversion, rever-
sal, and unexpected movement – the features of spatial alterity. And, as we
have seen in Book iii, Pope refers to this inverted geography by the same
name, the “new world,” that identified the Americas in this period of impe-
rial expansion, suggesting that this mode of geographical defamiliarization
might be a way of registering the impact of that actual, alien landscape.
A clear example of another mode of alterity, distinct from the human or the
spatial, occurs in a distinctive rhetorical structure located at the beginning
of the second epistle of Pope’s Essay on Man, in a passage that evokes the
chain of being:

Superior beings, when of late they saw

A mortal Man unfold all Nature’s law,
Admir’d such wisdom in an earthly shape,
And shew’d a Newton as we shew an Ape.
(ii, 31–4)

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These lines posit a relationship that at first suggests an orderly hierarchy

from apes to humans to angels, following the progressive upward trajectory
of the chain of being. But it ultimately questions such orderly arrangements
by placing the human in a relative position, in relation to which angels and
apes are then defined. If humans are to angels as apes are to humans, then
we must imagine a continuing regress in which apes are to humans as some
other being is to apes, or angels are to some other being as humans are
to angels. Such a regress makes the privileged position of humans or even
angels purely relative, rather than absolute. Furthermore, as we have seen
in relation to the “poor Indian” passage, the urban “show” alluded to here
itself links apes and humans in a similar relativist fashion. “Natives” and
apes were displayed interchangeably in this period, as equivalent objects of
a kind of ecumenical global curiosity. To “show” a Newton, then – that
is, to put a human being on display for money – is an allusion that links
Newton, apes, and “natives.” The linking of Newton and the ape, then, not
only undercuts the hierarchy of the chain of being, but joins that subversion
with an allusion to the species debate.
A hidden reversal of the same sort is effected in the rhetoric of the final
passage of Windsor-Forest, when the new world comes home to England:

Then Ships of uncouth Form shall stem the Tyde,

And Feather’d People crowd my wealthy Side,
And naked Youths and painted Chiefs admire
Our Speech, our Colour, and our strange Attire!
(403–6)

The contemporary scene to which Pope’s passage refers is the experience of

the visits of “native” princes or “chiefs” to London in this period – here most
likely the embassy of the four Iroquois sachems, or the Indian Kings, that
occurred in 1711, shortly before the publication of this poem. The historical
experience of this visit was for many Londoners captured by the striking
visual impact of the Indians in the “strange attire” provided them for the
occasion. But, overturning the expectation of the admiration of the British
populace at the attire of these visitors, Pope’s lines place the European figure,
instead of the Indians, in the position of object of amazement. The Indian
Kings were to the people of London as, in these lines, the British are to the
painted Chiefs. The analogy is at first circular – Londoners admire natives,
just as natives admire Londoners. But it also follows the relativist model
of Newton and the ape: the Indian Kings might admire some other beings
as much as the Londoners admired them, or the British might admire some
other beings as much as the painted chiefs admire them in Windsor-Forest’s

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utopian scene. The relativist result collapses Londoners and natives, in the
same unfamiliar connection as Newton and the ape.
Placed in this context, the widespread use of zeugma that characterizes
the rhetoric of Pope’s Rape of the Lock can be seen as another means of
generating the same alienating effect of relativism through the same structure
of regress. Zeugma is the rhetorical device in which two incongruous parts
of a sentence are linked together by a single verb. A well known example
implicates the political world:

Here Britain’s Statesmen oft the Fall foredoom

Of Foreign Tyrants, and of Nymphs at home;
Here Thou, Great Anna! whom three Realms obey,
Doth sometimes Counsel take – and sometimes Tea.
(iii, 5–8)

Each of these two couplets works in the same way, and to the same end.
Superimposing foreign policy and personal love affairs, or public political
consultation and the private, decorative custom of the tea table reverses the
conventional thinking that would see politics as an especially serious endeav-
our. But, like Newton and the ape, it also suggests a regress in which the
statesmen or Anna is the fulcrum of a relativist scenario. Standing between
counsel and tea, Queen Anne might make politics a trivial social event, but
she might also make the tea table into serious politics. If tea can be as serious
as counsel, then the orderly and hierarchical significance of the two terms –
counsel above tea – is collapsed into a connection that levels the two in the
same surprising and unfamiliar way as Newton and the ape. The same effect
is created by the statesmen’s relation to the tyrants and the nymphs. This
rhetorical sequence of inversion and regress compactly reproduces the imag-
inative experience that we have seen elaborated in the much richer modes of
human and spatial alterity. Here again, the effect is to undercut systems of
order or hierarchy in a surprising moment of defamiliarization. But in this
case language itself is complicit in representing alterity, through the role of
the verb as the linking agent or fulcrum for this alienating effect; the formal
regress of these passages points to a deeper defamiliarization – a strangeness
that recent deconstructive theory would locate in the arbitrary nature of the
linguistic sign.
The final example of alterity – the existential mode – extends this funda-
mental questioning of the human significance of language to a defamiliariza-
tion of human being. Indeed, this mode might also be understood through
the post-structuralist argument that links the deconstruction of the unity of
the word with that of the unity of being.8 The existential mode is strongly
evident in the representation of women in Pope’s Epistle to a Lady and The

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Dunciad. In these poems, the figure of the woman evokes an alternative

mode of being, which calls conventions of character itself into question. In
the opening lines of the Epistle to a Lady, a poem that seeks to account for
the “Characters of Women,” the definition of the female is proposed as a
form of absence: “Most Women have no Characters at all” (2).The body
of the poem depicts female character as constituted entirely by inconstancy,
like Atossa who is “Scarce once herself, by turns all Womankind!” (116).
Through its series of portraits, the poem extends this idea of changeable-
ness or unknowability beyond variable character into the representation of
a disappearance of the body as well as the soul. This effect is described in the
passage near the end of the poem that generalizes about the “whole sex.” “At
last” when their youth is gone they take the form of true characterlessness:

As Hags hold Sabbaths, less for joy than spight,

So these their merry, miserable Night;
Still round and round the Ghosts of Beauty glide,
And haunt the places where their honour dy’d.
(239–42)

These empty “Ghosts of Beauty” – living exemplars of an evacuated female

being – call into question the existence of human being itself.
We can see the same state of non-being evoked in The Dunciad through
the depiction of the Mighty Mother, Dulness. Like the “Ghosts of Beauty,”
Dulness is a form of female emptiness; daughter of “Chaos and eternal
Night” (i, 12), she presides over “Emptiness” (i, 36), “nonsense” (i, 60),
and namelessness (i, 56).Her power to overwhelm the order and value of
modern culture, bringing “Universal Darkness” (iv, 655) to the world, arises
directly and self-reflexively from her own non-being. The fogs and mists that
surround Dulness visually express her absence – both from view and from
being:

All these, and more, the cloud-compelling Queen

Beholds thro’ fogs, that magnify the scene.
She, tinsel’d o’er in robes of varying hues,
With self-applause her wild creation views:
Sees momentary monsters rise and fall,
And with her own fools-colours gilds them all.
(i, 79–84)

A kind of empty fog herself, in this passage Dulness’s emptiness is represented

as a lens that generates a vision of a “wild creation” – a “new world” of her
own making. Dulness is a kind of ghost – surrounded by but also composed
of clouds and fogs – who, as her “self-applause” indicates, exists only in

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and for herself, just as the “Ghosts of Beauty” are defined by their circular
haunting of their own past. But significantly, this emptiness is the source of
Dulness’s “wild creation,” and connects her absence with the defamiliarized
landscapes of The Dunciad. In fact, the “scene” of “wild creation” that she
is described as creating here is the perverse landscape of Egypt and Zembla
where “Realms shift their place, and Ocean turns to land” (i, 72).
What do these modes of alterity tell us about the imaginative world of
Pope’s poetry? They show us the scope of its strangeness – a strangeness that
can be embodied in a human form, laid out before us in a landscape, enacted
through a rhetorical play on the relationships among words, or conceived as
a character that is “no character at all.” These modes of alterity are variously
interconnected – especially through the cultural and geographical differences
highlighted in European global expansion and exploitation, and through the
new sciences’ challenges to traditional structures of knowledge and belief.
But despite these connections, alterity as we have explored it here does not
convey a simple or single message: the “poor Indian” is both privileged
and satirized, the “new world” of Dulness is both attractive and disturbing,
the landscape of Britain is both a locus of power and a scene of disorder,
the leveling of Londoners and natives or of Newton and the ape is both
liberating and disturbing. And though we can trace the relevance of alterity to
cultural encounter, intellectual and scientific innovation, religious freedom,
imperialist ideology, racialist thought, and even animal liberation, none of
these very significant political, intellectual, or social issues fully accounts for
the representation of alterity in literary culture, or for any of the particular
modes we have canvassed here. Though it is used to various specific political
and social ends – in the eighteenth century and in the present day as well –
alterity always stands apart from our uses of it. Strangeness, in Pope’s writing
and in general, seems to be an end in itself.

NOTES
1. Richard D. Altick, The Shows of London (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1978). For important studies in this area, see Further Reading, pp. 237–246.
2. Philip Edwards, The Story of the Voyage: Sea Narratives in Eighteenth-Century
England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
3. A. O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1953); Harriet Ritvo, The Animal Estate:
The English and Other Creatures in the Victorian Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1987); and The Platypus and the Mermaid and Other Figments
of the Classifying Imagination (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997).
4. Harriet Ritvo, “Barring the Cross: Miscegenation and Purity in Eighteenth- and
Nineteenth-Century Britain,” in Human, All Too Human, ed., Diana Fuss (New
York: Routledge, 1996), pp. 37–58.

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5. Keith Thomas, Man and the Natural World: A History of the Modern Sensibility
(New York: Pantheon, 1983).
6. For examples of major work on women see Further Reading, pp. 237–246 below.
On monstrosity and Pope’s own self-represented marginality see Further Reading,
pp. 237–246 below. On slavery see Laura Brown, Alexander Pope (Oxford: Basil
Blackwell, 1985), p. 40; Howard Erskine-Hill, “Pope and Slavery,” in Alexander
Pope: World and Word, ed. Howard Erskine-Hill (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1998), pp. 37–9; and John Richardson, “Alexander Pope’s ‘Windsor-Forest’:
Its Context and Attitudes Toward Slavery,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 35 (2001):
pp. 1–17.
7. Jean Hagstrum, The Sister Arts: The Tradition of Literary Pictorialism and
English Poetry from Dryden to Gray (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958);
Murray Krieger, Ekphrasis: The Illusion of the Natural Sign (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1992); James Heffernan, Museum of Words: The Poet-
ics of Ekphrasis from Homer to Ashbery (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1993).
8. Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974).

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 FURTHER READING

This list represents a selection from the vast library devoted to work on Pope. It
is confined to full-length books, with a few exceptions. In addition, it emphasizes
more recent work, and includes older studies only where they have withstood the
test of time and retain their currency. For a more complete listing of earlier studies,
see Kowalk, Lopez, and Tobin in the section on Bibliographical Works below.

Reference

Bibliographical works
Bedford E. G. and R. J. Dilligan, eds. A Concordance to the Poems of Alexander
Pope. 2 vols. Detroit: Gale, 1974.
Griffith, R. H. Alexander Pope: A Bibliography. 2 vols. Austin: University of Texas
Press, 1922–7. Not yet supplanted.
Foxon, D. F. English Verse, 1701–1750: A Catalogue of Separately Printed Poems
with Notes on Contemporary Collected Editions. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1975. Contains important listings of editions of Pope’s poems.
Guerinot, J. V. Pamphlet Attacks on Alexander Pope 1711–1744: A Descriptive Bib-
liography. London: Methuen, 1969. Describes the wide range of hostile com-
mentary published in Pope’s lifetime.
Kowalk, W. Alexander Pope: An Annotated Bibliography of Twentieth-Century Crit-
icism 1900–1979. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1981.
Lopez, C. L. Alexander Pope: An Annotated Bibliography, 1945–1967. Gainesville:
University of Florida Press, 1970.
Tobin, J. E. Alexander Pope: A List of Critical Studies Published from 1895 to 1944.
New York: Cosmopolitan Science and Art Service Co., 1945.

Aids to study
Baines, P. The Complete Critical Guide to Alexander Pope. London: Routledge, 2000.
Comprehensive survey of secondary material.
Barnard, J., ed. Pope: The Critical Heritage. London: Routledge, 1973. Charts the
earlier phases of Pope’s reception.
Berry, R. A Pope Chronology. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1988. The bare biographic facts,
set out day by day.
Rogers, P. The Alexander Pope Encyclopedia. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2004.

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Wimsatt, W. K. The Portraits of Alexander Pope. New Haven: Yale University Press,
1965. Catalogues images of the poet, both portraits and caricatures.

Modern editions

Collected works
The Twickenham Edition of the Works of Alexander Pope. Ed. J. Butt et al. 11 vols.
London: Methuen, 1938–68. The standard edition.
The Prose Works of Alexander Pope, vol. 1, The Earlier Works 1711–1720. Ed. N.
Ault. Oxford: Blackwell, 1936. Vol. 2, The Major Works 1725–1744. Ed. R.
Cowler. Hamden, CT: Archon, 1986.

Selected works
Literary Criticism of Alexander Pope. Ed. B. A. Goldgar. Lincoln: University of
Nebraska Press, 1965.
Selected Prose of Alexander Pope. Ed. P. Hammond. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1987.

Separate works
The Art of Sinking in Poetry. Ed. E. L. Steeves. New York: King’s Crown Press, 1952.
The Rape Observed: An Edition of Alexander Pope’s Poem “The Rape of the Lock.”
Ed. C. Tracy. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974.
The Rape of the Lock. Ed. C. Wall. Boston: Bedford Books, 1998. Contains extensive
collection of relevant documents.
The Iliad. Ed. S. Shankman. London: Penguin, 1996. With full introduction.
The Dunciad in Four Books. Ed. V. Rumbold. Harlow, Essex: Longman, 1999. A
comprehensive edition, with exhaustive annotation.
Pope’s Dunciad of 1728: A History and Facsimile. Ed. D. L. Vander Meulen.
Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1991. A text with bibliographical
history.

Collaborations
The Memoirs of the Extraordinary Life, Works, and Discoveries of Martinus
Scriblerus. Ed. C. Kerby-Miller. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1950. Col-
laborative work by the Scriblerus group, with full introduction and notes.

Manuscripts
The Last and Greatest Art: Some Unpublished Poetical Manuscripts of Alexander
Pope. Ed. M. Mack. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1984. Extensive
collection of Pope’s works surviving in manuscript.

Letters
The Correspondence of Alexander Pope. Ed. G. Sherburn. 5 vols. Oxford: Clarendon,
1956. Standard edition.
Alexander Pope: Selected Letters. Ed. H. Erskine-Hill. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2000. A generous selection.

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Biography
Mack, M. Alexander Pope: A Life. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985. The
fullest and most illuminating life.
Rosslyn, F. Alexander Pope: A Literary Life. London: Macmillan, 1990. A short
introduction to Pope.
Sherburn G. The Early Career of Alexander Pope. Oxford: Clarendon, 1934. Remains
an extremely valuable account of Pope’s life up to 1727.
Spence, J. Anecdotes, Observations, and Characters of Books and Men. Ed. J. M.
Osborn. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon, 1966. Invaluable source of Pope’s autobio-
graphic asides.

Criticism

Collections: published work

Essential Articles for the Study of Alexander Pope. Ed. M. Mack. Hamden, CT:
Archon, rev edn, 1968. Contains many of the most historically influential studies
on Pope.
Alexander Pope: A Critical Anthology. Ed. F. W. Bateson and N. A. Joukovsky.
Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972.
Pope: Recent Essays by Several Hands. Ed. M. Mack and J. A. Winn. Hamden, CT:
Archon, 1980. Supplements the earlier Essential Articles (above).
Pope. Ed. B. Hammond. Harlow, Hertfordshire: Longman, 1996. Concentrates on
modern and revisionist readings.

Collections: new work

Pope and His Contemporaries: Essays Presented to George Sherburn. Ed. J. L. Clif-
ford and L. A. Landa. Oxford: Clarendon, 1949. Contains some classic items.
Writers and Their Background: Alexander Pope. Ed. P. Dixon. London: G. Bell, 1972.
The Art of Alexander Pope. Ed. H. Erskine-Hill and A. Smith. London: Vision Press,
1979.
The Enduring Legacy: Alexander Pope Tercentenary Essays. Ed. G. S. Rousseau and
P. Rogers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Alexander Pope: Essays for the Tercentenary. Ed. C. Nicholson. Aberdeen: Aberdeen
University Press, 1988.
Pope: New Contexts. Ed. D. Fairer. Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire: Harvester,
1990. Emphasizes contemporary approaches.
Alexander Pope: World and Word. Ed. H. Erskine-Hill. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1998.

Monographs and essays: general

Bogel, F. V. Acts of Knowledge: Pope’s Later Poems. Lewisburg: Bucknell University
Press, 1981.
Damrosch, L. The Imaginative World of Alexander Pope. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1987.
Ferguson, R. The Unbalanced Mind: Pope and the Rule of Passion. Brighton: Har-
vester, 1986.

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Griffin, D. H. Alexander Pope: The Poet in the Poems. Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1978.
Jackson, W. Vision and Re-Vision in Alexander Pope. Detroit: Wayne State University
Press, 1983.
Morris, D. B. Alexander Pope: The Genius of Sense. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 1984.
Noggle, J. The Skeptical Sublime: Aesthetic Ideology in Pope and the Tory Satirists.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Rogers, P. Essays on Pope. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
Russo, J. P. Alexander Pope: Tradition and Identity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 1972.

Studies of individual works

Leranbaum, M. Alexander Pope’s “Opus Magnum,” 1729–1744. Oxford: Claren-
don, 1977.
Nuttall, A. D. Pope’s “Essay on Man.” London: Allen & Unwin, 1984.
Solomon, H. M. The Rape of the Text: Reading and Misreading Pope’s “Essay on
Man.” Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1993.
Aden, J. M. Something like Horace: Studies in the Art and Allusion of Pope’s Horatian
Satires. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1969.
Dixon, P. The World of Pope’s Satires: An Introduction to the “Epistles” and “Imi-
tations of Horace.” London: Methuen, 1968.
Maresca, T. E. Pope’s Horatian Poems. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1966.
Stack, F. Pope and Horace: Studies in Imitation. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1985.
More Solid Learning: New Perspectives on Alexander Pope’s “Dunciad.” Ed. C.
Ingrassia and C. N. Thomas. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2000.
Williams, A. Pope’s “Dunciad”: A Study of Its Meaning. London: Methuen, 1955. A
classic reading.
Winn, J. A. A Window in the Bosom: The Letters of Alexander Pope. Hamden, CT:
Archon, 1977.

Background and comparison

Brown, L. Ends of Empire: Women and Ideology in Early Eighteenth-Century English
Literature. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993.
Carretta, V. The Snarling Muse: Verbal and Visual Political Satire from Pope to
Churchill. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983.
Doody, M. A. The Daring Muse: Augustan Poetry Reconsidered. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1985.
Erskine-Hill, H. The Poetry of Opposition and Revolution: Dryden to Wordsworth.
Oxford: Clarendon, 1996.
Hammond, B. Professional Imaginative Writing in England, 1670–1740: “Hackney
for Bread.” Oxford: Clarendon, 1997.
Ingram, A. Intricate Laughter in the Satire of Swift and Pope. Basingstoke: Macmil-
lan, 1986.
Ingrassia, C. Authorship, Commerce, and Gender in Early Eighteenth-Century
England: A Culture of Paper Credit. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1998.

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 f u rt h e r r e a d i n g

Jack, I. Augustan Satire: Intention and Idiom in English Poetry, 1660–1750. Oxford:
Clarendon, 1952.
Kernan, A. The Plot of Satire. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965.
Nokes, D. Raillery and Rage: A Study of Eighteenth Century Satire. Brighton: Har-
vester, 1987.
Rawson, C. Order from Confusion Sprung: Studies in Eighteenth-Century Literature
from Swift to Cowper. London: Allen & Unwin, 1985.
Satire and Sentiment, 1660–1830: Stress Points in the English Augustan Tradition.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Rawson, C. and J. Mezciems, eds. Pope, Swift, and their Circle. The Yearbook of
English Studies, Special Number. London: Modern Humanities Research Asso-
ciation, 1988.
Rivers, I., ed. Books and their Readers in Eighteenth-Century England: New Essays.
Leicester: Leicester University Press, 2001.
Rogers, P. Eighteenth-Century Encounters: Studies in Literature and Society in the
Age of Walpole. Brighton: Harvester, 1985.
Literature and Popular Culture in Eighteenth-Century England. Brighton: Har-
vester, 1985.
Weinbrot, H. The Formal Strain: Studies in Augustan Imitation and Satire. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1969.
Eighteenth-Century Satire: Essays on Text and Context from Dryden to Peter
Pindar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Woodman, T. Politeness and Poetry in the Age of Pope. Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh
Dickinson University Press, 1989.

Particular topics

Self and world

Deutsch, H. Resemblance and Disgrace: Alexander Pope and the Deformation of
Culture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996.
Dickie, S. “Hilarity and Pitilessness in the Mid-Eighteenth Century: English Jestbook
Humor.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 37: 1 (2003): 1–22.
Mack, M. “‘The Least Thing like a Man in England’: Some Effects of Pope’s Physical
Disability on His Life and Literary Career.” In Collected in Himself: Essays Crit-
ical, Biographical, and Bibliographical on Pope and some of his Contemporaries.
Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1982: pp. 372–92.
Todd, D. Imagining Monsters: Miscreations of the Self in Eighteenth-Century
England. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.

Friends and enemies

Grundy, I. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: Comet of the Enlightenment. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1999.
Hammond, B. S. Pope and Bolingbroke: A Study of Friendship and Influence.
Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1984.
Nokes, D. John Gay: A Profession of Friendship. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1995.

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Rumbold, V. Women’s Place in Pope’s World. Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1989.

Versification and voice

Sitter, J. E. The Poetry of Pope’s “Dunciad.” Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 1971.
Spacks, P. M. An Argument of Images: The Poetry of Alexander Pope. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1971.
Tillotson, G. On the Poetry of Pope. Oxford: Clarendon, 1938.

Pope’s Homer
Knight, D. Pope and the Heroic Tradition. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1951.
Shankman, S. Pope’s Iliad: Homer in the Age of Passion. Princeton: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 1983.
In Search of the Classic: Reconsidering the Greco-Roman Tradition, Homer
to Valéry and Beyond. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press,
1994.
See also The Twickenham Edition of the Works of Alexander Pope (above), vii–x.

Pope and the classics

Brower, R. A. Alexander Pope: The Poetry of Allusion. Oxford: Clarendon, 1959.
Erskine-Hill, H. The Augustan Idea in English Literature. London: Edward Arnold,
1983.
Levine, J. M. The Battle of the Books: History and Literature in the Augustan. Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press, 1991.
Weinbrot, H. D. Alexander Pope and the Traditions of Formal Verse Satire. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1982.
Augustus Caesar in “Augustan” England: The Decline of a Classical Norm.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978.

Pope and the Elizabethans

Babb, L. “The Cave of Spleen.” Review of English Studies 12 (1936): 165–76.
Beer, G. “‘Our unnatural No-voice’: The Heroic Epistle, Pope, and Women’s Gothic.”
Yearbook of English Studies 12 (1982): 125–51.
Erskine-Hill, H. The Augustan Idea in English Literature. London: Edward Arnold,
1983.
Fairer, D. Pope’s Imagination. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984.
Wasserman, E. R. Elizabethan Poetry in the Eighteenth Century. Urbana: University
of Illinois Press, 1947.

Pastoral and georgic

Chalker, J. The English Georgic: A Study of the Development of a Form. London:
Routledge, 1969.
Rogers, P. The Symbolic Design of Windsor-Forest: Iconography, Pageant, and
Prophecy in Pope’s Early Work. Newark: University of Delaware Press,
2004.
Pope and the Destiny of the Stuarts: History, Politics, and Mythology in the Age
of Queen Anne. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.

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Ideology
Barrell, J. “The Uses of Contradiction: Pope’s ‘Epistle to Bathurst.’” In Poetry, Lan-
guage and Politics. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988: pp. 79–99.
Brown, L. Ends of Empire: Women and Ideology in Early Eighteenth-century English
Literature. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993.
Gerrard, C. The Patriot Opposition to Walpole: Poetry, Politics, and National Myth
1725–1742. Oxford: Clarendon, 1994.
Hammond, B. S. Pope and Bolingbroke: A Study of Friendship and Influence.
Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1984.
Haydon, C. Anti-Catholicism in Eighteenth-Century England, c.1714–80.
Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993.
Kramnick, I. Bolingbroke and his Circle: The Politics of Nostalgia in the Age of
Walpole. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968.
Monod, P. K. Jacobitism and the English People, 1688–1788. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1989.
Skinner, Q. Visions of Politics. 3 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2002.
Young, B. W. Religion and Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century England: Theolog-
ical Debate from Locke to Burke. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Politics
Aden, J. M. Pope’s Once and Future Kings: Satire and Politics in the Early Career.
Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1978.
Brooks-Davies, D. Pope’s “Dunciad” and the Queen of the Night: A Study of Emo-
tional Jacobitism. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985.
Cruickshanks, E. Political Untouchables: The Tories and the ’45. London: Duckworth
1979.
Cruickshanks, E. and H. Erskine-Hill, The Atterbury Plot. London: Palgrave, 2004.
“The Waltham Black Act and Jacobitism.” Journal of British Studies 24 (1985):
358–65.
Erskine-Hill, H. “Alexander Pope: The Political Poet in His Time.” Eighteenth-
Century Studies 15 (1981–82): 123–48.
“Pope and Civil Conflict.” In Enlightened Groves: Essays in Honour of Professor
Zenzo Suzuki. Eds. Eiichi Hara, Hiroshi Ozawa and Peter Robinson. Tokyo:
Shohakusha, 1996.
Poetry of Opposition and Revolution. Oxford: Clarendon, 1996.
Gerrard, C. The Patriot Opposition to Walpole: Poetry, Politics, and National Myth
1725–1742. Oxford: Clarendon, 1994.
Goldgar, B. A. Walpole and the Wits: The Relation of Politics to Literature, 1722–
1742. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1976.
Lenman, B. Jacobite Risings in Britain 1689–1746. London: Methuen, 1984.
Monod, P. K. Jacobitism and the English People, 1688–1788. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1989.
Rogers, P. “The Waltham Blacks and the Black Act.” Historical Journal 17 (1974):
465–86.
“Blacks and Poetry and Pope.” In Eighteenth-Century Encounters. Brighton: Har-
vester, 1985: pp. 75–92.

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 f u rt h e r r e a d i n g

Szechi, D. Jacobitism and Tory Politics, 1710–14. Edinburgh: J. Donald, 1984.

Thompson, E. P. Whigs and Hunters: The Origin of the Black Act. Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1975. A highly influential and contentious book.
Weinbrot, H. D. Britannia’s Issue: The Rise of British Literature from Dryden to
Ossian. Cambridge: Cambidge University Press, 1993.

Crime and punishment

Baines, P. The House of Forgery in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Aldershot: Ashgate,
1999.
“‘Earless on High’: Satire and the Pillory in the Early Eighteenth Century.”
Eighteenth-Century World 1:1 (2003): 28–45.
“Theft and Poetry and Pope.” In Plagiarism in Early Modern England. Ed. Paulina
Kewes. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003: pp. 166–80.
Bell, I. Literature and Crime in Augustan England. London: Routledge, 1991.
Linebaugh, P. “The Ordinary of Newgate and his Account.” In Crime in England
1550–1800. Ed. J. S. Cockburn. London: Methuen, 1977: pp. 246–69.
Reynolds, R. “Libels and Satires! Lawless Things Indeed!” Eighteenth-Century Stud-
ies 8 (1975): 475–7.
Rogers, P. “Pope and the Social Scene.” In Writers and their Background: Alexander
Pope. Ed. P. Dixon. London: G. Bell, 1972: pp. 101–42.
Sharpe, J. A. Crime in Early Modern England. Harlow: Longman, 1984.

Landscapes and estates

Batey, M. Alexander Pope: The Poet and the Landscape. London: Barn Elms, 1999.
Brownell, M. R. Alexander Pope and the Arts of Georgian England. Oxford: Claren-
don, 1978.
Hunt, J. D. Garden and Grove: The Italian Renaissance Garden and the English
Imagination: 1600–1750. London: Dent, 1986.
Kelsall, M. The Great Good Place: The Country House and English Literature. Hemel
Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993.
Mack, M. The Garden and the City: Retirement and Politics in the Later Poetry
of Pope 1731–1743. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969. A key work,
covering both landscape and politics.
Martin, P. Pursuing Innocent Pleasures: The Gardening World of Alexander Pope.
Hamden, CT: Archon, 1984.

Money
Carswell, J. The South Sea Bubble. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1960.
Dickson, P. G. M. The Financial Revolution in England. New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 1967.
Erskine-Hill, H. The Social Milieu of Alexander Pope: Lives, Example and the Poetic
Response. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975.
Foxon, D. Pope and the Early Eighteenth-Century Book Trade. Ed. J. McLaverty.
Oxford: Clarendon, 1991.
Nicholson, C. Writing and the Rise of Finance. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1994.

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The book trade

Baines, P. and P. Rogers. Edmund Curll, Bookseller. Oxford: Clarendon, 2007.
Ezell, M. J. M. Social Authorship and the Advent of Print. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1999.
Foxon, D. Pope and the Early Eighteenth-Century Book Trade. Ed. J. McLaverty.
Oxford: Clarendon, 1991. A book of central importance.
McLaverty, J. Pope, Print, and Meaning. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
Rogers, P. Grub Street: Studies in a Subculture. London: Methuen, 1972; abridged
as Hacks and Dunces: Pope, Swift, and Grub Street. London: Methuen, 1980.

Gender
Bowers, T. The Politics of Motherhood: British Writing and Culture, 1680–1760.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Francus, M. “The Monstrous Mother: Reproductive Anxiety in Swift and Pope.”
ELH 61 (1994): 829–51.
Ingrassia, C. “Women Writing/Writing Women: Pope, Dulness, and ‘Feminization’
in the Dunciad.” Eighteenth-Century Life 14 (1990): 40–58.
Knellwolf, C. A Contradiction Still: Representations of Women in the Poetry of
Alexander Pope. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998.
Nussbaum, F. The Brink of All We Hate: English Satires on Women, 1660–1750.
Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1984.
Pollak, E. The Poetics of Sexual Myth: Gender and Ideology in the Verse of Swift
and Pope. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985.
Rumbold, V. Women’s Place in Pope’s World. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1989.
Straub, K. Sexual Suspects: Eighteenth-Century Players and Sexual Ideology.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992.
Williams, C. D. Pope, Homer, and Manliness: Some Aspects of Eighteenth-Century
Classical Learning. London: Routledge, 1993.
Zimbardo, R. A. At Zero Point: Discourse, Culture, and Satire in Restoration Eng-
land. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1998.

Medicine and the body

Nicolson, M. H. and G. S. Rousseau. “This Long Disease, My Life”: Alexander Pope
and the Sciences. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968.
Rousseau, G. S. Nervous Acts: Essays on Literature, Culture and Sensibility.
Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2004.
Stephanson, R. The Yard of Wit: Male Creativity and Sexuality 1650–1750.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004.

The other
Barker, A. J. The African Link: British Attitudes to the Negro in the Era of the
Atlantic Slave Trade, 1550–1807. London: Frank Cass, 1978.
Deutsch, H. Resemblance and Disgrace: Alexander Pope and the Deformation of
Culture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996.
Fabricant, C. “Defining Self and Others: Pope and Eighteenth-Century Gender Ide-
ology.” Criticism 39 (1997): 503–30.

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Francus, M. “The Monstrous Mother: Reproductive Anxiety in Swift and Pope.”

ELH 61 (1994): 829–51.
Gubar, S. “The Female Monster in Augustan Satire.” Signs 3 (1977): 380–94.
Stallybrass, P. and A. White. The Politics and Poetics of Transgression. Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1986.
Todd, D. Imagining Monsters: Miscreations of the Self in Eighteenth-Century Eng-
land. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.
Wheeler, R. The Complexion of Race: Categories of Difference in Eighteenth-
Century British Culture. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000.

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Cambridge University Press
978-0-521-84013-2 - The Cambridge Companion to Alexander Pope
Edited by Pat Rogers
Index
More information

INDEX

Main references are in bold type. AP = Alexander Pope.

Achilles, 65–7, 69, 70, 73, 74, 78, 214, 217 Bacon, Francis, first Baron Verulam
Addison, Joseph (1672–1719), author, 3, 7, (1561–1626), author, 17, 20
28, 29–30, 89, 105, 135, 146, 158, 202 Bank of England, 176
Cato, 28, 29 Barber, John (1675–1741), printer, 194
Aeschylus (525–456 bc), Greek dramatist, 80 Bathurst, Allen, first Earl (1684–1775),
Agamemnon, 65, 66, 69, 70, 78 friend of AP, 162, 168–71, 194, 214
Ajax, 65, 73, 74 Bentley, Richard (1662–1742), classical
Akenside, Mark (1721–70), poet, 216 scholar, 5, 72–4, 202
Allen, Ralph (1693–1764), businessman and Berkshire, 9, 105, 106, 111, 113, 161, 210
philanthropist, 162 Betterton, Thomas (1635–1710), actor, 1,
“Amica”, 199 188
Ancients and Moderns, 72, 74, 79 Bevis Mount, Hampshire, 162
Anglicanism, 10, 121, 122, 126, 127, 128, Binfield, Berkshire, 4, 25, 29, 106, 107, 113,
130 161, 198
animal spirits, 218 Bion, Greek poet, 108
Anne, Queen (1665–1714), 4, 31, 90, 111, Blackmore, Sir Richard (1654–1729),
112, 119, 135, 233 physician and poet, 38, 69, 207, 215,
Arbuthnot, John (1667–1735), physician and 216, 218
writer, 27, 31, 33, 35, 93, 143, 155, Blackwell, Thomas (1701–57), classical
158–9, 212, 219 scholar, 81
Arcadia, 9, 108, 111, 112, 116 Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, 165, 171
Ariosto, Ludovico (1474–1533), Italian Blount, Martha (1690–1763), friend of
poet, 93 AP, 16, 26, 27, 35, 112, 113, 128, 169,
Aristotle (384–322 bc), Greek 177, 180, 199, 205, 206
philosopher, 64 Blount, Teresa (1688–1759),
Arnold, Matthew (1828–88), author, 50 gentlewoman, 26, 112, 113, 200, 206
Atterbury, Francis (1662–1732), Blunt, Sir John (1677–1733), South Sea
churchman, 5, 31, 123, 134, 136–7, projector, 156
140, 157, Boileau, Nicolas Despréaux (1636–1711),
199 French poet, 78
Atterbury plot (1722–23), 5, 10, 134, Bolingbroke, Henry St John, first Viscount
136–7, 141, 144, 147 (1678–1751), politician, 4, 10, 22,
Augustus (C. Julius Caesar Octavianus), 30–1, 33, 34, 86, 112, 120, 124–5, 127,
Emperor of Rome (63 bc–ad 14), 69, 128, 129, 147, 162, 165, 168, 199
76, 81, 82, 85, 98, 141, 168 Bond, Denis (1676–1747), politician and
Augustanism, 8, 76, 85, 121, 168 swindler, 156

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Bowles, William Lisle (1762–1850), poet and Cicero, M. Tullius (106–43 bc), Roman
editor, 105, 109, 220 orator and writer, 1, 81, 164, 168, 202
Bridewell house of correction, London, 153 Cirencester, Gloucestershire, 162, 168–71,
Bridgeman, Charles (c.1690–1738), 173, 214
landscape gardener, 166 Clarke, Samuel (1675–1729),
Bridges, Ralph (1679–1758), friend of metaphysician, 128–30
AP, 63, 64 Cobham, Richard Temple, first Viscount
Broome, William (1689–1745), poet, 73, (1675–1749), soldier and politician, 162
182, 190 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (1772–1834),
Budgell, Eustace (1686–1737), writer, 157 author, 38, 67, 212, 218, 219
Burlington, Richard Boyle, third Earl of Collins, Anthony (1676–1729),
(1695–1753), virtuoso and architect, 30, freethinker, 72
161, 162, 164, 168–71, 172, 194, 214 Concanen, Matthew (1701–49), writer, 143
Button’s Coffee House, London, 29 Congreve, William (1670–1729),
Byron, George Gordon, sixth Baron dramatist, 150, 186
(1788–1824), poet, 1, 173, 218, 220 Coningsby, Thomas, first Earl (1656–1729),
Bysshe, Edward, writer, 58 politician, 156
Cotton, Charles (1630–87), poet, 98, 168
Caesar, C. Julius (100–44 bc), Roman Cowley, Abraham (1618–67), poet, 165
general and dictator, 81 Craftsman, The, 83, 135
Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, 73, 74 Craggs, James, Junior (1686–1721),
Camden, William (1551–1623), politician, 135, 140
antiquarian, 90, 101 credit, 176, 177, 184, 227
Caroline, Queen (1683–1727), 143, 207 Creech, Thomas (1659–1700), poet, 187
Caryll, John (1667–1736), friend of AP, 26, Cromwell, Henry (1659–1728), friend of
27, 30, 35, 112, 113, 178, 179, 188, AP, 26, 150, 196, 201
213 Cook, Japhet (1662–1734), swindler, 155,
Catholic community, 9, 19, 112, 118, 136 159, 160
Centlivre, Susanna (c.1669–1723), Crousaz, Jean-Pierre de (1663–1750),
dramatist, 117, 207 theologian, 126, 127
Ceres, 109, 115, 172 Curll, Edmund (1683–1747), bookseller, 7,
chain of being, 47, 224, 231, 232 11, 30, 32, 33, 60, 61, 98, 152, 191–3,
Chancery, court of, 157, 158, 194 194, 195, 196, 213
Chapman, George (c.1559–1634), dramatist
and translator, 65, 66, 89 Dacier, Anne (1651–1720), classical
Charles Edward (1720–88), the Young scholar, 78
Pretender, 123, 139, 140 Daily Gazetteer, 83
Charteris, Francis (c.1665–1732), rake and Daniel, Samuel (1562–1619), poet, 95
rapist, 69, 155, 156, 157 Davies, Sir John (1569–1626), poet, 96, 101
Chaucer, Geoffrey (c.1343–1400), poet, 38, Dawley, Middlesex, 31, 162, 168
39, 151 Defoe, Daniel (1660–1731), author, 154
Cheselden, William (1688–1752), deism, 72, 120, 121, 125–7
surgeon, 212, 215, 216 Dennis, John (1657–1734), critic, 15, 18, 26,
Chetwood, William Rufus (d. 1766), 28–9, 30, 59, 61, 182, 194
bookseller, 193 Descartes, René (1596–1650),
Cheyne, George (1673–1743), physician and philosopher, 66, 130
author, 215–20 Diana, 90, 109, 111
Chiswick (Middlesex), 4, 112, 113; Chiswick Digby, Robert (1692–1726), friend of
Villa, 162, 164, 168–71 AP, 140, 162, 169
Churchill, Charles (1731–64), poet, 39 Dodsley, Robert (1703–64), publisher, 182,
Cibber, Colley (1671–1757), actor and 195
dramatist, 5, 14, 15, 30, 33–4, 91, 146, Donne, John (1572–1631), churchman and
199, 212, 217 poet, 9, 40–3, 89, 95, 96

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Drayton, Michael (1563–1631), poet, 90, 93, Golden Age, 108, 125, 140
95, 108 Gordon, Thomas (c.1691–1750), writer, 81,
Dryden, John (1631–1700), author, 1, 8, 38, 146–7
39, 50, 51, 82, 84, 89, 100, 110 Grand Tour, 73, 74
Dublin (Ireland), 4, 5 Grub Street, 11, 15, 16, 153, 155, 165, 169,
dunces, 5, 23, 96, 153, 154, 158, 213 183, 191, 192, 193, 196
Grub-street Journal, 195
Easthampstead, Berkshire, 106, 114
Eden, 110 Hampton Court, Middlesex, 5, 52, 164
Empson, William (1906–84), critic, 2, 16 Hanoverian ; accession, 4, 119
ekphrasis, 55, 229 Hanoverian regime, 82, 84, 86, 119, 134,
Elizabeth I, Queen (1533–1603), 90, 98 135, 162, 173
Enlightenment, 9, 226 Harcourt, Simon, first Viscount
epic, 15, 67, 71, 92 (c.1661–1727), lawyer, 138, 155
Erasmus, Desiderius (1466–1536), Harley administration, 4, 112
humanist, 90, 97 Harley, Edward see Oxford, second Earl of
estates, 10, 161–74 Harley, Robert see Oxford, first Earl of
Euripides (c.485–406 bc), Greek Hartley, David (1705–57), doctor and
dramatist, 80 philosopher, 218
Evans, Abel (1679–1737), poet, 122 Haywood, Eliza (c.1693–1756), writer, 117,
Exchange Alley, London, 183 192–3, 207, 225
Hazlitt, William (1778–1830), critic, 220
Fenton, Elijah (1683–1730), poet, 182, 190 Hearne, Thomas (1678–1735),
Financial Revolution, 11, 176, 227 antiquarian, 122
Fleet Ditch (London), 91, 100, 116 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Fontenelle, Bernard Le Bovier de (1770–1831), German philosopher, 226
(1657–1757), French author, 108 Herrick, Robert (1591–1664), poet, 108,
Fortescue, William (1687–1749), lawyer and 168
friend of AP, 10, 135, 136, 137–9, 140, Hervey, John Baron (1696–1743),
141–2 courtier, 15, 18, 33, 99, 158, 202
Foxon, David (1923–2001), scholar, 180, Hobbes, Thomas (1588–1679),
189 philosopher, 130
French Revolution, 119 Homer (Greek poet), 4, 16, 26, 51, 59, 61,
63–74, 77, 78–9, 80, 85, 108, 214
Galen (Claudius Galenus) (c.130–201 ad), Iliad, 4, 55, 71, 74; Odyssey, 73
physician, 93, 219 see also Pope, works, translations
Garrick, David (1717–79), actor, 19–20 Hopkins, Gerard Manley (1844–89),
Garth, Sir Samuel (1661–1719), physician poet, 39
and poet, 218 Horace (Q. Horatius Flaccus) (65–8 bc),
Gay, John (1685–1732), author, 4, 7, 26–7, Roman poet, 6, 9, 18, 21, 67, 68, 69,
28, 30, 31, 33, 35, 93, 113, 115, 136, 137, 70, 76–7, 78, 81, 82, 83–4, 86, 98–100,
139, 141, 152, 179, 188, 191, 212, 113, 140, 144, 145, 165, 166, 168, 173,
213 187, 202; see also Pope, works,
The Beggar’s Opera, 30; Polly, 30, 31; Imitations of Horace
Trivia, 115, 189 Houghton Hall (Norfolk), 165, 171
George I, King (1660–1727), 70, 112, 114, House of Lords, 31, 134, 136, 154, 195
134 Howard, Henrietta, Countess of Suffolk
George II, King (1683–1760), 5, 31, 70, 83, (c.1688–1767), courtier and friend of
85, 134, 142, 143, 144, 146, 153 AP, 138, 162
georgic, 110–12, 115 Hughes, John (1677–1720), writer, 91
Gibbon, Edward (1737–94), historian, 82, 84
Gilliver, Lawton (c.1703–48), bookseller, Indian kings, 232
182, 194–6 Isle of Wight, Hampshire, 142

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Jacobite rising ; (1715–16), 4, 30–1, 114, 134; Marble Hill, Middlesex, 162
(1745–46), 122, 123, 124 Marlborough, John Churchill, first Duke of
Jacobitism, 10, 111, 119, 120, 121, 123, 134, (1650–1722), soldier, 165, 171
136, 140, 143 Marlowe, Christopher (1564–93), poet and
James II, King (1633–1701), 3, 118, 121, dramatist, 94
122, 136, 154 Marston, John (1576–1634), dramatist and
James Edward (1688–1766), the Old satirist, 97, 100, 101
Pretender, 134 Martial (M. Valerius Martialus)
Jefferson, Thomas (1743–1826), US (ad c.40–c.103), Roman poet, 113
statesman, 169, 170, 173 Marvell, Andrew (1621–78), poet, 108, 168,
Jervas, Charles (1675–17439), artist, 49, 174
141 Marx, Karl (1818–83), political
Johnson, Esther (“Stella”) (1681–1728), philosopher, 228
gentlewoman, 34, 199 Mary II, Queen (1662–94), 3; see also
Johnson, Samuel (1709–84), author, 6, 86, William and Mary
183, 184, 185, 215, 220 Mead, Richard (1673–1754), physician, 218
Lives of the Poets, 14, 51, 86, 162, 183, Middleton, Conyers (1683–1750), writer, 81
184, 185, 215 Milton, John (1608–74), poet, 1, 5, 38, 43,
Jonson, Ben (1572–1637), poet and 51, 77, 85, 86, 89, 127, 162, 171, 172,
dramatist, 9, 68, 80, 94, 96, 98–9, 173, 204
168 Paradise Lost, 72–4, 80, 85, 87, 94
Juvenal (Decimus Junius Juvenalis) (c. ad Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley (1689–1762),
55–c.130), Roman satirist, 8, 77, 83, 84 writer, 7, 17, 18, 31–3, 94, 152, 177,
191, 200, 202, 206, 211, 212, 225
Kent, William (1685–1748), architect and Montaigne, Michel de (1533–92),
designer, 165, 166, 214 essayist, 18, 21, 90, 97, 98
Moore Smythe, James (1702–34), writer, 193
Lamb, Charles (1775–1834), author, 1 Moorfields, London, 191, 192
La Motte, Antoine Houdar de (1673–1731), Moschus, Greek poet, 108
French critic, 78 Murray, William, first Earl of Mansfield
Lansdowne, George Granville, first Baron (1705–93), lawyer, 127, 150, 196
(1666–1735), poet and patron, 187
Lewis, William, bookseller, 187 Neoplatonism, 94, 169, 171
liberty, 81, 173 nerves, 215–20
Lintot, Bernard (1675–1736), bookseller, 4, Newcomb, Thomas (c.1681–1765), poet, 83
11, 59, 61, 63, 188–91, 192–3, 194 Newgate prison, London, 150, 159
Locke, John (1632–1704), philosopher, 21, Newton, Sir Isaac (1642–1727),
172, 173, 215 physicist, 128, 219, 227, 231–2, 233
Loddon, river, 90–1, 106, 231
London, 3, 4, 15, 19, 26, 106, 107, 112, 116, Odysseus, 65, 73, 217
118, 119, 161, 162, 164, 165, 186, 212, Ogilby, John (1600–76), writer, 59
223, 232 Old Bailey, London, 150, 153, 155
Longinus, Greek critic, 59, 67, 73, 74, 78, opposition to Walpole see Patriot opposition
151 Osborne, Thomas (c.1704–67),
Lucilius, Gaius (180–102 bc), Roman bookseller, 193
satirist, 99, 100 Ovid (P. Ovidius Naso) (43 bc– ad 17),
Lyttelton, George, first Baron (1709–73), Roman poet, 8, 81, 108, 113, 201
writer and politician, 21 Heroides, 15, 66, 95, 204;
Metamorphoses, 23, 115
Mack, Maynard (1909–2001), scholar, 2, 7, Oxford, Oxfordshire, 29, 122
8, 16, 17, 32, 33–4, 55, 59, 70, 97, 135, Oxford, Edward Harley, second Earl of
165, 185, 212, 215, 220 (1689–1741), friend of AP, 142, 143,
Mapledurham, Oxfordshire, 35, 112, 113 194

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Oxford, Robert, first Earl of (1661–1724), 162–6, 170, 172, 185; grotto, 5, 162,
statesman, 4, 31, 112, 156 164, 165–6, 185; retirement, 19, 107,
114, 175
Palladio, Andrea (1508–80), Italian identity and self-fashioning, 12, 14–24,
architect, 162, 166; Palladianism, 5, 164 107, 211, 212
Pan, 111, 230 reputation, 1–2; early, 1; Romantics, 1,
patriotism, 120, 125 105; Victorian, 1–2, 105; twentieth
Patriot opposition, 9, 10, 82, 86, 120, 134, century, 2, 105; feminist approaches, 2,
162 222; attacks on Pope, 7, 15, 28
pax Britannica, 80, 230 friends and enemies; friendship general, 7,
penal laws, 19, 107, 112, 118, 119, 159, 25–35, 199; Arbuthnot, 35, 143;
198 Atterbury, 31, 134; Martha Blount, 16,
Persius (Aulus Persius Flaccus) (ad 34–62), 26, 112, 199, 205, 206; Bolingbroke,
Roman satirist, 84 30–1, 112, 120, 165, 168; Burlington,
Peterborough, Charles Mordaunt, third 30, 161, 168–71; Caryll, 26, 112;
Earl of (1658–1735), soldier, 138, 162, Cromwell, 26, 201; Gay, 26–7, 113;
165 Swift, 7, 34–5; enmities general;
Philips, Ambrose (1674–1749), poet, 26 Addison, 29–30, 135; Bentley, 5, 72–4,
Pigott, Nathaniel (1661–1737), lawyer, 202; Cibber, 5, 32, 33–4, 199; Curll, 7,
150 31, 33, 60, 191–3; Dennis, 26, 28, 59,
Pix. Mary (1666–1709), dramatist, 207 182; Montagu, 7, 18, 31–3, 200, 202;
Plato (c.427–347 bc), Greek Theobald, 32, 33, 59–61
philosopher, 70, 77, 78 language and poetic technique:
Pliny the Younger (ad 61–113), Roman style, 7; decorum, 37; diction, 50–2;
author, 164, 168 epigram, 40; mock heroic, 5, 15, 64, 71,
Pope, Alexander, Sr. (1646–1717), father of 116; sound, 8; spatial effects, 49–62;
AP, 3, 4, 107, 114, 119, 130, 199 visualization, 49; voice, 8, 37
Pope, Alexander (1688–1744) devices; alliteration, 39; antithesis, 39;
biographic and personal references: assonance, 39; catalogues, 55, 56;
life general, 3–6; birth, 3, 118, 122, 176; character sketches, 46; epithets, 50;
childhood and youth, 3, 105, 106, 107, parallelism, 39; periphrasis, 50, 51;
198, 210; early reading, 3, 107, 199; personification, 51; present participles,
influenced by elders, 3, 199; beginning 51, 55; simile, 39; syntax, 8; zeugma,
of literary career, 3; education, 107, 233
198, 199, 216; supposed marriage, 199; versification, 37–48, 56; couplets, 8, 18,
care of parents, 4, 106, 166, 180, 200; 37–40, 50, 54, 201; enjambment, 41, 42;
death, 6, 118 iambic pentameter, 37, 39; rhyme, 39,
health, 7, 12, 216; accident with cow, 14, 43, 51, 58; stress, 39, 43; verse
210, 211; appearance, 28, 31, 210; body, paragraphs, 45, 46, 47, 57
210–20; deformity, 7, 12, 14, 16, 24, 77, interests and influences:
180, 198, 210, 212, 219, 225; classics, 76–87; epic, 63–74, 108; satire,
dwarfdom, 14, 198, 210, 212, 214, 219; 76–87
eyesight, 210; other illnesses, 210, 212; landscape painting, 229, 230; architecture,
sexual life, 212; suspected abnormalities 213, 214; estates, 161–74; landscape
of genitals, 211, 212, 219; tubercular gardening, 10, 107, 161–74, 213, 214;
condition, 14, 198, 210, 212; wet nurse, AP as painter, 49
14, 198 medicine, 210–20; Pope’s interest, 215–20
homes; Hammersmith, 107; Binfield, 4, religion, 21, 118, 121–2, 124–7, 165;
106, 107, 161; departure from the Catholicism, 3, 7, 9, 14, 118, 120,
Forest, 106, 112–14; move to Chiswick, 122–3, 124, 127, 128, 137, 140, 157,
4, 112, 113; residence in Twickenham, 4, 179, 180, 198, 199, 200, 207, 210, 212;
5, 19, 114, 173, 175, 179, 215; villa and Catholic friends, 4, 26, 35, 134; deism,
garden at Twickenham, 5, 10, 25, 161, 125–7

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topics 152–4; presented to the King, 31, 142,

book trade, 186–96; booksellers, 4, 11, 143; publication, 194, 195; rationalism,
181, 186–96; copyright, 181, 189; 129–30; Spenserian elements, 92; Virgil
publishers set up by AP, 182, 194; in, 71, 85, 86; women in, 206–7, 225
self-publication, 181, 186; subscriptions, Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate
4, 11, 180–1, 187, 189–91; typography, Lady, 58, 65–7, 93, 95–6, 151, 200
55–6, 59, 187, 188, 194 Eloisa to Abelard, 1, 4, 8, 12, 15, 16, 19,
crime, 1, 150–60; benefit of clergy, 40–3, 44, 50, 56–8, 61, 65–7, 93, 94–5, 151,
153; lawyers, 150, 153; pillory, 152–4, 200, 204–5, 211
160; punishment, 150–60 Essay on Criticism, 1, 3, 6, 15, 16, 21, 26,
Elizabethan literature, 9, 89–102 28, 40, 43, 45, 46, 51, 63, 77, 79, 151–2,
gender, 12, 198–207; femininity, 198, 199, 187–8, 189, 217
200, 201, 203, 205; masculinity, 198, Essay on Man, 6, 12, 19, 22–3, 40, 45, 61,
199, 203, 204, 212; sexual activity, 33, 67, 94, 96–7, 118, 120, 122, 126, 128,
199; women, 200–2, 205, 225, 233; 131, 216, 222–5, 231–2; theodicy, 16,
women authors, 117, 206–7; ideology, 22; chain of love, 47, 48; ruling passion,
9, 119–31 67, 211; Renaissance background, 96–7;
money, 11, 175–85; alleged parsimony, deism, 125–7, 128; orthodoxy, 128;
185; pension offered, 135; investments, printing, 195; on the sexes, 201;
176, 177, 178, 179; taxation, 131, 179; Newton in, 219, 231–2, 233, 235; poor
earnings, 180, 182, 186, 187, 188–9, Indian episode, 222–5, 227, 232, 235
190, 195 Imitations of Donne, 40–3; Second Satire,
the other, 12, 222–35; alterity, 12, 225, 40–2; Fourth Satire, 42, 89, 99–100
227, 228, 231, 235; non-human, 224; Imitations of Horace, 2, 6, 11, 16, 25, 77,
imperialism, 223, 227, 230; monstrous, 135, 164, 182, 216; Epilogue to the
211, 225, 230; native Americans, 222; Satires, 15, 25, 76, 83, 114, 146–7,
race, 222, 224; non-European, 222–5; 159–60, 165, 173, 212, 218; Epistle to
savages, 223, 224; slavery, 225, 227 Arbuthnot, 6, 7, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 24,
pastoral, 9, 105–8, 117; Arcadia, 106, 27, 33, 35, 46, 49, 51, 91, 105, 107,
108, 111, 112; pastoral tradition, 108 158–9, 175, 184, 187, 200, 202, 210,
politics, 6, 134–48; oppositional, 9, 10, 211, 219; Epistle I.i, 21–2, 98, 182, 183;
77, 121–3, 125, 134, 135, 162, 200; Epistle I.vi, 150, 176; Epistle I.vii, 179,
Toryism, 15, 198, 207 182; Epistle II.i, 90, 145–6, 169, 184;
works: Epistle II.ii, 20, 45, 93, 114, 130, 140,
major poems; The Dunciad, 2, 6, 7, 15, 169, 175; Satire II.i, 6, 18, 25, 67–70,
17, 19, 30, 71–4, 91, 97, 98, 120, 87, 99, 144–5, 157–8, 169, 176; Satire
142–5, 155, 158, 183, 184, 192–4, 219; II.ii, 107; Sober Advice from Horace,
Augustan Dunciad, 85–6; book trade, 160, 202, 216, 230–31
192–4; Cave of Poverty, 92; Chaos, 101; Messiah, 80
commercialization of art, 176, 180; Moral Essays, 6, 19, 67, 177, 182; Epistle
compared to Rape of the Lock, 5; to a Lady, 2, 6, 16, 46, 61, 96, 205–6,
dedication to Swift, 34; deism, 121; The 225, 233–4; Epistle to Bathurst, 46,
Dunciad in Four Books, 23, 30, 70, 77, 155–6, 168–71, 176, 177, 182–3; Epistle
85–6, 160; The Dunciad Variorum, 31, to Burlington, 10, 61, 162, 168–71, 177,
50; Elizabethan influences, 91–2; epic 214; Epistle to Cobham, 21, 97, 98,
models, 71, 92; final vision, 6, 15, 19; 205, 206
games, 60, 192–3; heroes, 32, 33–4, Opus Magnum (planned), 19, 195
59–61, 217; Homeric background, 71–4; Pastorals, 3, 15, 19, 26, 77, 109–10, 111,
Jonsonian elements, 100–1; Milton in, 186, 187
85, 86, 87; mud-diving, 116; “New Rape of the Lock, 1, 4, 6, 8, 43–4, 52–5,
World” portrayal of Dulness, 234–5; 61, 64–5, 77, 93, 134, 180, 203–4;
Nighttown, 105; notes, 31, 33, 50, 59, Catholic concerns, 85; Cave of Spleen,
61, 101; pastoral, 115–17; pillory, 54, 92, 211; commodification, 2;

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couplets, 8, 50; compared to Dunciad, 54, 65, 94, 203–4; Belinda, 43–4, 45,
5; gender, 203–4; and Iliad, 64–5; 52–4, 61, 64, 93–4, 151, 203–4, 206,
justice, 151; mock heroic, 4, 15, 193; 211; Bufo, 158; Cloe, 46; Clarissa, 64,
payment, 189; Rape of the Locke 77, 94, 203; Cotta, 156, 169; Dulness,
(1712), 4, 188; Renaissance psychology, 15, 73, 91, 92, 160, 206–7, 228, 232,
93–4; revisions, 45–6, 203; rhythm, 234–5; Eloisa, 19, 44, 56–8, 66, 94–5,
43–4; spaces, 50, 52–5; sylphs, 45, 52, 96, 151, 204–5, 211; Lord Fanny, 68,
54, 93, 204, 206; zeugma, 233 105; Flavia, 46, 96; Lodona, 111, 112,
Temple of Fame, 92, 189 115; Man of Ross, 46, 156, 171; Sir
Windsor-Forest, 1, 4, 16, 77, 80, 84, 90–1, Plume, 203; Poor Indian, 222–5, 227,
101, 107, 110–12, 114, 115, 134, 177, 232, 235; Sapho, 32, 33, 150, 202, 211;
189, 217, 230–33 Sporus, 15, 24, 33, 46, 99, 105, 158,
minor poems ; Epistle to Jervas, 49; Epistle 159, 202; Thalestris, 203; Tibbald, 192;
to Miss Blount on her leaving the Town, Timon, 162, 169–71, 172, 173
113; Epistle to Miss Blount with the Pope, Edith (1643–1733), mother of
Works of Voiture, 12, 200; Epitaph on AP, 107, 166, 180, 200
Himself, 61, 77, 86; epitaph on Popish Plot (1678), 42
Atterbury, 123; Hymn Written in Prior Park (Somerset), 162
Windsor Forest, 113; imitations of
Chaucer ; Ode for Musick, 189; Ode on Quayle, Thomas (1884–1963), critic, 50–2
Solitude, 26, 173; On a Lady who pisst
at the Tragedy of Cato, 29; Presentation Rackett family, 136, 141
Verses to Nathaniel Pigott, 150; The Rackett, Magdalen (c.1679–1749), half-sister
Universal Prayer, 126–7; Verses for of AP’s, 107, 141, 199
Bernard Lintot’s Miscellany, 188 Ramsay, Andrew Michael (1686–1743),
Translations: Homer, 2, 14, 63–74, 86, author, 139, 140
178, 182, 186, 199, 202, 212 Rapin, René (1621–87), French critic, 108
Iliad, 4, 7, 29, 50, 55–6, 59, 63, 77, rapture, 217–18
78–9, 80, 85, 141, 180, 189, 190, 217 Renaissance, 9, 46, 65, 66, 90, 93, 94, 95,
Odyssey, 5, 8, 63, 67, 138, 140, 168, 96, 97, 100, 102, 108, 165, 171, 174,
180, 190, 217 213
Works of AP (1717), 1, 4, 14, 16, 77, 150; Restoration, 89, 205, 213, 215
(1735), 196 Revolution of 1688, 119, 121, 122
editions: Shakespeare, 5, 32, 33, 59, 80, Richardson, Jonathan, Sr. (1665–1745),
190; Works of Buckingham, 136 artist, 14, 17
prose works: Discourse on Pastoral Poetry, Richardson, Jonathan, Jr. (1694–1771),
108; Full and True Account, 191; artist, 14, 17
Further Account, 152, 191; Guardian Riskins, Buckinghamshire, 162
papers, 162; Key to the Lock, 189 Rocque, John (c.1709–62), mapmaker, 166
collaborative works: Peri Bathous, 5, 69, Rome, ancient, 70, 80, 81, 82, 85, 164, 214
96; Stradling versus Stiles, 141; Three Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712–78), French
Hours after Marriage, 27, 32, 33, 93 author, 223
Letters: publication, 30, 194, 195, 196; Rowe, Nicholas (1674–1718), author, 150,
AP’s correspondence cited, 15, 18, 25, 188
26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 94, Royal Society, 93
112, 113, 114, 128, 137, 138, 139, 140,
141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 147, 150, 158, St John, Henry see Bolingbroke
169, 175, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181, 183, Sarpedon, 63, 64, 77
187, 188, 190, 212, 213 Savage, Richard (c.1698–1743), poet, 143,
characters in Pope’s poetry: 182
Appius, 15, 28; Ariel, 52–4; Aristarchus, Scriblerian group, 4, 5, 6, 34, 93, 141, 212
72, 73, 74; Atossa, 16, 46; Atticus, 46, Scriblerus, Martinus, satiric figure, 31, 33,
202; Sir Balaam, 156, 182; the Baron, 192

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Serle, John (d. 1746), Pope’s gardener, 162, with AP, 6, 34–5; Gulliver’s Travels, 5,
165, 166 34, 138
Settle, Elkanah (1648–1724), writer, 100
Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, third Tacitus (P. Cornelius Tacitus) (ad c.55–120),
Earl of (1671–1713), philosopher, 125, Roman historian, 81
171 Tasso, Torquato (1544–95), Italian poet, 108
Shakespeare, William (1564–1616), Tatler, The, 3
dramatist, 5, 20, 43, 86, 89, 93, 94; see Taylor, John (1580–1653), poet, 116, 117
also Pope, works, edition of Shakespeare “Ten Mile Act” (1689), 107, 118
Sherborne, Dorset, 162, 169, 173 Tennyson, Alfred, first Baron (1809–92),
Sherburn, George (1884–1962), scholar, 2, poet, 6, 38
27, 30, 138 Thames, river, 4, 52, 90, 91, 116, 117, 118,
Sheridan, Thomas (1687–1738), writer, 34, 141, 153, 162, 164, 198, 231
96 Theobald, Lewis (1688–1744), writer, 30,
Sidney, Sir Philip (1554–86), poet and 32, 33, 34, 59–61, 153, 155
soldier, 172 Theocritus, Greek poet, 108
Sophocles (c.496–406 bc), Greek Tickell, Thomas (1685–1740), poet, 29, 189
dramatist, 80 Tindal, Matthew (1657–1733), deist, 121–2
Southcott, Thomas (1671–1748), Tonson, Jacob, senior (1655–1737),
priest, 139–40, 142 publisher, 3, 11, 150, 186–8, 189, 190
South Sea Bubble (1720), 11, 156, 177, Tories, 81, 136, 147
178–9 Townshend, Charles, second Viscount
South Sea Company, 176, 177, 179 (1674–1738), politician, 135
Spectator, The, 3, 29 Trumbull, Sir William (1639–1716), diplomat
Spence, Joseph (1699–1768), collector of and mentor of AP, 3, 106, 114
anecdotes on AP, 18, 30, 39, 82, 107, Tusculum, Italy, 164
139, 140, 181 Tutchin, John (c.1661–1707), writer, 154
Anecdotes cited, 30, 39, 51, 82, 89, 96, 98, Twickenham, Middlesex, 4, 25, 114, 161,
105, 107, 135, 139–41, 162, 185, 189, 162–6, 170, 175, 215; see also Pope,
204, 210 homes
Spenser, Edmund (1552–99), poet, 9, 89, Twickenham edition of AP’s works, 2, 8, 59,
91–2, 93, 108, 171, 181 74, 173
Faerie Queene, 89, 90, 91–2, 93 Tyburn (London), 150, 153
Spinoza, Benedict de (1632–77), Dutch
philosopher, 126, 130 Utrecht, Treaty of (1713), 4, 90, 177
Stanhope, James, first Earl (1673–1721),
soldier and politician, 135 Vendler, Helen, scholar, 22–3, 131
Stanton Harcourt, Oxfordshire, 32, 33 Virgil (P. Vergilius Maro) (70–19 bc), Roman
Stationers’ Company, 196 poet, 8, 16, 51, 55, 61, 77, 78, 81, 82,
Stationers’ Register, 194, 195, 196 84, 85, 86, 140
Steele, Sir Richard (1672–1729), author, 3, Aeneid, 71, 82, 85, 147
29, 187 Eclogues, 80, 108, 116
Sterne, Laurence (1713–68), novelist ; Georgics, 80, 172
Tristram Shandy, 218 Vitruvius (M. Vitruvius Pollio), Roman
stoicism, 96–7 architect, 162, 172
Stowe, Buckinghamshire, 162, 173 Voltaire François-Marie Arouet),
Strand, London, 193 (1694–1778), author, 14, 210
Stuarts, 111, 115, 119, 120, 134
Sunderland, Charles Spencer, third Earl of Walker, Richard (1679–1764), scholar, 73, 74
(1674–1722), politician, 135, 136 Waller, Edmund (1606–87), poet, 39, 89
Swift, Jonathan (1667–1745), author, 4, 5, Walpole, Robert, first Earl of Orford
7, 25, 27, 30, 34–5, 64, 79, 86, 115, 138, (1676–1745), 10, 31, 34, 70, 83, 84, 85,
139, 143, 145, 199, 212, 213; relations 92, 123, 126, 135, 136, 138, 158, 159;

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Atterbury plot, 134, 136–7; Dunciad, 31, Westminster School, 154

142–4; Houghton Hall, 165, 171; Wharton, Philip, first Duke of (1698–1731),
ministry, 5, 7, 83, 84, 86, 134, 162; Jacobite, 21
opposition, 9, 82, 86, 120, 125, 134, Whigs, 3, 81, 82, 84, 120, 129, 130, 135, 136,
147; relations with AP, 135, 137–9, 156, 207
142–8, 162; relations with Fortescue, Wild, Jonathan (1683–1725), criminal boss,
136, 141–2; Southcott affair, 139–41, 159
142 William III, King (1650–1702), 3, 114, 115,
Walsh, William (1663–1708), poet, 25, 186, 131, 168; William and Mary II, 107,
187 118, 124
Walter, Peter (c.1664–1746), steward and Willis, Thomas (1621–75), physician, 215–20
broker, 69, 155, 159 Windsor, Berkshire, 106, 231
War of the Spanish Succession, 80 Windsor Castle, 230
Warburton, William (1698–1779), Windsor Forest, 3, 106, 107, 112, 113
churchman and writer, 10, 120, 121, Wordsworth, William (1770–1850), poet, 1,
124–5, 127–8, 129, 144, 146, 150, 184, 38, 50, 51, 106, 171, 174
196, 203 Wotton, William (1666–1727), theologian,
Ward, Edward (1661–1731), writer, 155 215
Ward, John (1682–1755), swindler, 154, 156 Wright, John (d. 1754), printer, 194–6
Warton, Joseph (1722–1800), critic and Wyatt, Sir Thomas (1503–42), poet, 68
poet, 9 Wycherley, William (1641–1716), dramatist,
Warton, Thomas (1728–90), scholar, 9 3, 25, 87, 153, 195, 213
Watts, John (c.1678–1763), printer, 29,
187 Young, Edward (1683–1765), poet, 141–2,
Westminster Abbey, 27, 77 147

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