ESSAY ON CRITICISM BY ALEXANDER POPE EDITED BY B. M. WANTILOVE, M.A., LITT.D. PUBLISHED BY J. M. DENT & CO. LONDON LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA INTRODUCTION ALEXANDER POPE, the author of this poem, was born in Lombard Street, London, May 21st, 1688. His father, who was in business as a linen-draper in the Metropolis, was a man of some considerable education and culture. The child, therefore, spent his infancy and youth in an atmosphere of refinement and love of letters. His education, owing to the fact that his parents were staunch Roman Catholics, was not prosecuted at any of the better-class schools, but was pursued under tutors, too often incapable, and at Catholic seminaries of a very third-rate character. Still, he accumulated a marvellous amount of knowledge in manifold branches of study; and exhibited a precocity of genius only paralleled by Cowley. When the youthful poet was little more than twelve years of age, his father, having amassed a fortune in trade, retired from active participation in it, and purchased a rural retreat at Binfield, in Windsor Forest. Here the boy pursued both his studies and his poetical essays, his Ode on Solitude being written when he was entering his thirteenth year, while at fourteen he composed his poem on Silence, in imitation of Rochester's Nothing. At fifteen he translated the First Book of the Thebais of Statius, in which he first revealed the technical mastery he was acquiring over the English heroic couplet. At sixteen, Pope wrote his Pastorals. These, on being shown in MS. to the leading poets and critics of the day, elicited the warmest praise, and procured for him the friendship of Wycherley, by whom he was introduced to Addison, Swift, Steele, Arbuthnot, and others. The Pastorals were published in Tonson's Miscellany for 1709. That same year he wrote the poem which we here present to the reader, though it did not see the light till 1711. Meantime, having temporarily taken up his residence in London, he was studying the best models in poetry with great assiduity, the veteran critic, William Walsh, being his metrical mentor. The interest in the youth, awakened by the Essay on Criticism, was exalted into enthusiasm by the publication of a paper in the Spectator (No. 253), in which the great Addison, then, as now, regarded as one of the most judicious critics in the language, pronounced it a masterpiece of its kind, while honestly pointing out certain blemishes in it. The reading public were quite ready, therefore, to welcome Pope's next production, the first draft of the Rape of the Lock, which appeared in Linton's Miscellany for 1712. In that form it was very much less elaborate than now it is, the present "machinery" of sylphs and gnomes being, as Professor Minto says, an afterthought which the poet carried into effect in his re-issue of the poem in 1714. Pope was now regarded as in the very first rank of English poets, and every succeeding work only confirmed the judgment formed by competent critics. Henceforward his life was to be summed up in his books. Of few men has the saying been more absolutely true that "he lived to write.' His interest in anything else was secondary and transient. In March 1713 he published his Windsor Forest, with a flattering dedication to Lord Lansdowne, "Secretary at War"; followed by the Messiah, which appeared in the Spectator. Pope hitherto, though a Tory, a Jacobite, and a Catholic, had been on the best of terms with Addison and the Whig coterie of bards and reviewers; but a breach now occurred which reflected little credit on either side, and is an amusing, if a somewhat melancholy, revelation of jealousy on the one side and inordinate vanity on the other. Pope never could endure criticism, and to indicate faults in his work was to lay up for oneself " in pickle," to be applied when a favourable opportunity occurred. a rod In 1713 he commenced his translation of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, completing them in 1725. The former work is entirely his own translation; in the rendering of the latter he executed only twelve out of the twenty-four Books, Broome being responsible for Books 2, 6, 8, 11, 12, 16, 18, 23; and Fenton for Books I, 4, 19, 20. From this undertaking, which was published by subscription, the poet cleared over £8000, after deducting the share paid to his coadjutors, and all other expenses. He was thereby rendered independent, and could take house in London, in place of living in lodgings. He up |