THE POETICAL WORKS OF ALEXANDER POPE VOL. I. With Memoir, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes by THE REV. GEORGE GILFILLAN MMMMM.....DDDDDCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC.....LLLLLVVVVVIIIII..... A Penn State Electronic Classics Series Publication The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope: Volume One, with Memoir, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes by the Rev. George Gilfillan is a publication of the Pennsylvania State University. This Portable Document file is furnished free and without any charge of any kind. Any person using this document file, for any purpose, and in any way does so at his or her own risk. Neither the Pennsylvania State Uni- versity nor Jim Manis, Faculty Editor, nor anyone associated with the Pennsylvania State University assumes any responsibility for the material contained within the document or for the file as an electronic transmission, in any way. The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope: Volume One, with Memoir, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes by the Rev. George Gilfillan, the Pennsylvania State University, Electronic Classics Series, Jim Manis, Faculty Editor, Hazleton, PA 18201-1291 is a Portable Document File produced as part of an ongoing student publication project to bring classical works of literature, in English, to free and easy access of those wishing to make use of them. Cover Design: Jim Manis Copyright © 2004 The Pennsylvania State University The Pennsylvania State University is an equal opportunity university. Contents LIFE OF ALEXANDER POPE...................................................................................................................................6 PREFACE2..................................................................................................................................................................25 VARIATIONS IN THE AUTHOR’S MANUSCRIPT PREFACE.........................................................................31 PASTORALS, WITH A DISCOURSE ON PASTORAL POETRY. WRITTEN IN THE YEAR MDCCIV......32 SPRING.......................................................................................................................................................................37 SUMMER....................................................................................................................................................................41 AUTUMN....................................................................................................................................................................44 WINTER .....................................................................................................................................................................47 MESSIAH....................................................................................................................................................................50 AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM.....................................................................................................................................53 THE RAPE OF THE LOCK: AN HEROI-COMICAL POEM.............................................................................72 WINDSOR-FOREST38 .............................................................................................................................................94 ODE ON ST CECILIA’S DAY................................................................................................................................106 TWO CHORUSES TO THE TRAGEDY OF BRUTUS.......................................................................................109 TO THE AUTHOR OF A POEM ENTITLED SUCCESSIO55............................................................................111 ODE ON SOLITUDE56........................................................................................................................................... 112 THE DYING CHRISTIAN TO HIS SOUL ........................................................................................................... 113 ELEGY TO THE MEMORY OF AN UNFORTUNATE LADY58...................................................................... 113 PROLOGUE TO MR ADDISON’S ........................................................................................................................ 115 TRAGEDY OF CATO.............................................................................................................................................. 115 IMITATIONS OF ENGLISH POETS .................................................................................................................. 116 I. CHAUCER ............................................................................................................................................................ 116 II. SPENSER............................................................................................................................................................. 117 III. WALLER ............................................................................................................................................................ 119 ON A FAN OF THE AUTHOR’S DESIGN, IN WHICH WAS PAINTED THE STORY OF CEPHALUS AND PROCRIS, WITH THE MOTTO, .................................................................................................................... 119 IV. COWLEY............................................................................................................................................................120 V. EARL OF ROCHESTER ....................................................................................................................................121 VI. EARL OF DORSET...........................................................................................................................................123 VII. DR SWIFT ........................................................................................................................................................125 THE TEMPLE OF FAME.......................................................................................................................................125 ELOISA TO ABELARD ..........................................................................................................................................136 EPISTLE TO ROBERT EARL OF OXFORD AND EARL MORTIMER.68....................................................144 EPISTLE TO JAMES CRAGGS, ESQ.,................................................................................................................145 EPISTLE TO MR JERVAS,....................................................................................................................................146 EPISTLE TO MISS BLOUNT, ...............................................................................................................................148 EPISTLE TO MRS TERESA BLOUNT ................................................................................................................150 TO MRS M. B.75 ON HER BIRTHDAY ...............................................................................................................151 TO MR THOMAS SOUTHERN,76 ON HIS BIRTHDAY, 1742.........................................................................152 TO MR JOHN MOORE,.........................................................................................................................................153 TO MR C.,80 ST JAMES’S PLACE ......................................................................................................................154 EPITAPHS ................................................................................................................................................................154 I. ON CHARLES EARL OF DORSET, IN THE CHURCH OF WITHYAM, IN SUSSEX..............................154 II. ON SIR WILLIAM TRUMBULL.81 ................................................................................................................155 III. ON THE HON. SIMON HARCOURT, ONLY SON OF THE LORD CHANCELLOR HARCOURT, AT THE CHURCH OF STANTON HARCOURT, IN OXFORDSHIRE, 1720. ................................................155 IV. ON JAMES CRAGGS, ESQ. IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY..........................................................................156 V. INTENDED FOR MR ROWE, IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY........................................................................156 VI. ON MRS CORBET, WHO DIED OF A CANCER IN HER BREAST. ........................................................157 VIII. ON SIR GODFREY KNELLER, IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY, 1723......................................................158 IX. ON GENERAL HENRY WITHERS, IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY, 1729. .................................................159 X. ON MR ELIJAH FENTON,83 AT EASTHAMSTEAD, IN BERKS, 1730....................................................159 XI. ON MR GAY, IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY, 1732.........................................................................................160 XII. INTENDED FOR SIR ISAAC NEWTON, IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY..................................................160 XIII. ON DR FRANCIS ATTERBURY, BISHOP OF ROCHESTER, WHO DIED IN EXILE AT PARIS, 1732. 161 XIV. ON EDMUND DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM, WHO DIED IN THE NINETEENTH YEAR OF HIS AGE, 1735.161 XV. FOR ONE WHO WOULD NOT BE BURIED IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY............................................162 XVI. ANOTHER, ON THE SAME.........................................................................................................................162 XVII. ON TWO LOVERS STRUCK DEAD BY LIGHTNING.85......................................................................163 AN ESSAY ON MAN: IN FOUR EPISTLES TO HENRY ST JOHN, LORD BOLINGBROKE....................164 EPISTLE TO DR ARBUTHNOT; OR, PROLOGUE TO THE SATIRES.........................................................200 SATIRES AND EPISTLES OF HORACE IMITATED........................................................................................ 213 THE FIRST EPISTLE OF THE SECOND BOOK OF HORACE......................................................................228 THE SECOND EPISTLE OF THE SECOND BOOK OF HORACE.................................................................238 BOOK I. EPISTLE VII............................................................................................................................................246 BOOK II. SATIRE VI..............................................................................................................................................248 BOOK IV. ODE I. TO VENUS................................................................................................................................253 PART OF THE NINTH ODE OF THE FOURTH BOOK. ..................................................................................254 THE SATIRES OF DR JOHN DONNE, DEAN OF ST PAUL’S, VERSIFIED. ................................................254 EPILOGUE TO THE SATIRES. ............................................................................................................................264 Index of First Lines ..................................................................................................................................................277 The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope – Volume One THE POETICAL LLLLLIIIIIFFFFFEEEEE OOOOOFFFFF AAAAALLLLLEEEEEXXXXXAAAAANNNNNDDDDDEEEEERRRRR PPPPPOOOOOPPPPPEEEEE Alexander Pope was born in Lombard Street, London, on WORKS OF the 21st of May 1688—the year of the Revolution. His fa- ther was a linen-merchant, in thriving circumstances, and ALEXANDER said to have noble blood in his veins. His mother was Edith or Editha Turner, daughter of William Turner, Esq., of York. Mr Carruthers, in his excellent Life of the Poet, mentions POPE that there was an Alexander Pope, a clergyman, in the re- mote parish of Reay, in Caithness, who rode all the way to Twickenham to pay his great namesake a visit, and was pre- VOL. I. sented by him with a copy of the subscription edition of the “Odyssey,” in five volumes quarto, which is still preserved With Memoir, Critical Dissertation, by his descendants. Pope’s father had made about £10,000 and Explanatory Notes by trade; but being a Roman Catholic, and fond of a coun- try life, he retired from business shortly after the Revolu- by tion, at the early age of forty-six. He resided first at Kensington, and then in Binfield, in the neighbourhood of THE REV. GEORGE GILFILLAN Windsor Forest. He is said to have put his money in a strong box, and to have lived on the principal. His great delight was MMMMM.....DDDDDCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC.....LLLLLVVVVVIIIII..... in his garden; and both he and his wife seem to have cher- ished the warmest interest in their son, who was very deli- 6 The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope – Volume One cate in health, and their only child. Pope’s study is still pre- He had not been long at this school till he wrote a severe served in Binfield; and on the lawn, a cypress-tree which he lampoon, of two hundred lines’ length, on his master—so is said to have planted, is pointed out. truly was the “boy the father of the man”—for which demi- Pope was a premature and precocious child. His figure was Dunciad he was severely flogged. His father, offended at this, deformed—his back humped—his stature short (four feet)— removed him to a London school, kept by a Mr Deane. This his legs and arms disproportionably long. He was sometimes man taught the poet nothing; but his residence in London compared to a spider, and sometimes to a windmill. The gave him the opportunity of attending the theatres. With only mark of genius lay in his bright and piercing eye. He these he was so captivated, that he wrote a kind of play, which was sickly in constitution, and required and received great was acted by his schoolfellows, consisting of speeches from tenderness and care. Once, when three years old, he nar- Ogilby’s “Iliad,” tacked together with verses of his own. He rowly escaped from an angry cow, but was wounded in the became acquainted with Dryden’s works, and went to Wills’s throat. He was remarkable as a child for his amiable temper; coffee-house to see him. He says, “Virgilium tantum vidi.” and from the sweetness of his voice, received the name of the Such transient meetings of literary orbs are among the most Little Nightingale. His aunt gave him his first lessons in read- interesting passages in biography. Thus met Galileo with ing, and he soon became an enthusiastic lover of books; and Milton, Milton with Dryden, Dryden with Pope, and Burns by copying printed characters, taught himself to write. When with Scott. Carruthers strikingly remarks, “Considering the eight years old, he was placed under the care of the family perils and uncertainties of a literary life—its precarious re- priest, one Bannister, who taught him the Latin and Greek wards, feverish anxieties, mortifications, and disappoint- grammars together. He was next removed to a Catholic semi- ments, joined to the tyranny of the Tonsons and Lintots, nary at Twyford, near Winchester; and while there, read and the malice and envy of dunces, all of which Dryden had Ogilby’s “Homer” and Sandys’s “Ovid” with great delight. long and bitterly experienced—the aged poet could hardly 7 The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope – Volume One have looked at the delicate and deformed boy, whose preter- sarcasm. In the Forest, he became acquainted with Sir Will- natural acuteness and sensibility were seen in his dark eyes, iam Trumbull, the retired secretary of state, a man of general without a feeling approaching to grief, had he known that accomplishments, who read, rode, conversed with the youth- he was to fight a battle like that under which he was himself ful poet; introduced him to old Wycherley, the dramatist; then sinking, even though the Temple of Fame should at and was of material service to his views. With Wycherley, length open to receive him.” At twelve, he wrote the “Ode who was old, doted, and excessively vain, Pope did not con- to Solitude;” and shortly after, his satirical piece on Elkanah tinue long intimate. A coldness, springing from some criti- Settle, and some of his translations and imitations. His next cisms which the youth ventured to make on the veteran’s period, he says, was in Windsor Forest, where for several poetry, crept in between them. Walsh of Abberley, in years he did nothing but read the classics and indite poetry. Worcestershire, a man of good sense and taste, became, after He wrote a tragedy, a comedy, and four books of an Epic a perusal of the “Pastorals” in MS., a warm friend and kind called “Alexander,” all of which afterwards he committed to adviser of Pope’s, who has immortalised him in more than the flames. He translated also a portion of Statius, and Cicero one of his poems. Walsh told Pope that there had never hith- “De Senectute,” and “thought himself the greatest genius erto appeared in Britain a poet who was at once great and that ever was.” His father encouraged him in his studies, and correct, and exhorted him to aim at accuracy and elegance. when his verses did not please him, sent him back to “new When fifteen, he visited London, in order to acquire a more turn” them, saying, “These are not good rhymes.” His prin- thorough knowledge of French and Italian. At sixteen, he cipal favourites were Virgil’s “Eclogues,” in Latin; and in wrote the “Pastorals,” and a portion of “Windsor Forest,” English, Spencer, Waller, and Dryden—admiring Spencer, although they were not published for some time afterwards. we presume, for his luxuriant fancy, Waller for his smooth By his incessant exertions, he now began to feel his constitu- versification, and Dryden for his vigorous sense and vivid tion injured. He imagined himself dying, and sent farewell 8 The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope – Volume One letters to all his friends, including the Abbé Southcot. This common decency quits the words of male and female parties gentleman communicated Pope’s case to Dr Ratcliffe, who in their mutual communications, it is a very ample charity gave him some medical directions; by following which, the that can suppose it to adhere to their actions. And nowhere poet recovered. He was advised to relax in his studies, and to do we find grosser language than in some of Pope’s prose ride daily; and he prudently followed the advice. Many years epistles to the Blounts. afterwards, he repaid the benevolent Abbé by procuring for His “Pastorals,” after having been handed about in MS., him, through Sir Robert Walpole, the nomination to an ab- and shewn to such reputed judges as Lord Halifax, Lord bey in Avignon. This is only one of many proofs that, not- Somers, Garth, Congreve, &c., were at last, in 1709, printed withstanding his waspish temper, and his no small share of in the sixth volume of Tonson’s “Miscellanies.” Like all well- malice as well as vanity, there was a warm heart in our poet. finished commonplaces, they were received with instant and In 1707, Pope became acquainted with Michael Blount of universal applause. It is humiliating to contrast the recep- Maple, Durham, near Reading; whose two sisters, Martha tion of these empty echoes of inspiration, these agreeable and Teresa, he has commemorated in various verses. On his centos, with that of such genuine, although faulty poems, as connexion with these ladies, some mystery rests. Bowles has Keat’s “Endymion,” Shelley’s “Queen Mab,” and strongly and plausibly urged that it was not of the purest or Wordsworth’s “Lyrical Ballads.” Two years later, (in 1711), a most creditable order. Others have contended that it did not far better and more characteristic production from his pen go further than the manners of the age sanctioned; and they was ushered anonymously into the world. This was the “Es- say, “a much greater license in conversation and in epistolary say on Criticism,” a work which he had first written in prose, correspondence was permitted between the sexes than in our and which discovers a ripeness of judgment, a clearness of decorous age!” We are not careful to try and settle such a thought, a condensation of style, and a command over the delicate question—only we are inclined to suspect, that when information he possesses, worthy of any age in life, and al- 9 The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope – Volume One most of any mind in time. It serves, indeed, to shew what fantastic fancies grow suddenly out of realities, like the bud Pope’s true forte was. That lay not so much in poetry, as in from the bough, or the fairy-seeming wing of the summer- the knowledge of its principles and laws,—not so much in cloud from the stern azure of the heavens. creation, as in criticism. He was no Homer or Shakspeare; A little after this, Pope became acquainted with a far greater, but he might have been nearly as acute a judge of poetry as better, and truer man than himself, Joseph Addison. Aristotle, and nearly as eloquent an expounder of the rules Warburton, and others, have sadly misrepresented the of art and the glories of genius as Longinus. connexion between these two famous wits, as well as their In the same year, Pope printed “The Rape of the Lock,” in relative intellectual positions. Addison was a more amiable a volume of Miscellanies. Lord Petre had, much in the way and childlike person than Pope. He had much more, too, of described by the poet, stolen a lock of Miss Belle Fermor’s the Christian. He was not so elaborately polished and fur- hair,—a feat which led to an estrangement between the fami- bished as the author of “The Rape of the Lock;” but he had, lies. Pope set himself to reconcile them by this beautiful naturally, a finer and richer genius. Pope found early occa- poem,—a poem which has embalmed at once the quarrel sion for imagining Addison his disguised enemy. He gave and the reconciliation to all future time. In its first version, him a hint of his intention to introduce the machinery into the machinery was awanting, the “lock” was a desert, the “The Rape of the Lock.” Of this, Addison disapproved, and “rape” a natural event,—the small infantry of sylphs and said it was a delicious little thing already—merum sal. This, gnomes were slumbering uncreated in the poet’s mind; but Pope, and some of his friends, have attributed to jealousy; in the next edition he contrived to introduce them in a man- but it is obvious that Addison could not foresee the success ner so easy and so exquisite, as to remind you of the varia- with which the machinery was to be managed, and did fore- tions which occur in dreams, where one wonder seems softly see the difficulties connected with tinkering such an exquis- to slide into the bosom of another, and where beautiful and ite production. We may allude here to the circumstances 10