No More Learning

1000 to
suppress a satiric portrait of the old Duchess of Marlborough, and yet
of publishing it in a revision of a poem that he was engaged on just
before his death. The truth seems to be that Pope had drawn this
portrait in days when he was at bitter enmity with the Duchess, and
after the reconcilement that took place, unwilling to suppress it
entirely, had worked it over, and added passages out of keeping with the
first design, but pointing to another lady with whom he was now at odds.
Pope's behavior, we must admit, was not altogether creditable, but it
was that of an artist reluctant to throw away good work, not that of a
ruffian who stabs a woman he has taken money to spare.

Finally Pope was throughout his life, and notably in his later years,
the victim of an irritable temper and a quick, abusive tongue. His
irritability sprang in part, we may believe, from his physical
sufferings, even more, however, from the exquisitely sensitive heart
which made him feel a coarse insult as others would a blow. And of the
coarseness of the insults that were heaped upon Pope no one except the
careful student of his life can have any conception. His genius, his
morals, his person, his parents, and his religion were overwhelmed in
one indiscriminate flood of abuse. Too high spirited to submit tamely to
these attacks, too irritable to laugh at them, he struck back, and his
weapon was personal satire which cut like a whip and left a brand like a
hot iron. And if at times, as in the case of Addison, Pope was mistaken
in his object and assaulted one who was in no sense his enemy, the fault
lies not so much in his alleged malice as in the unhappy state of
warfare in which he lived.

Over against the faults of Pope we may set more than one noble
characteristic. The sensitive heart and impulsive temper that led him so
often into bitter warfare, made him also most susceptible to kindness
and quick to pity suffering. He was essentially of a tender and loving
nature, a devoted son, and a loyal friend, unwearied in acts of kindness
and generosity. His ruling passion, to use his own phrase, was a
devotion to letters, and he determined as early and worked as diligently
to make himself a poet as ever Milton did. His wretched body was
dominated by a high and eager mind, and he combined in an unparalleled
degree the fiery energy of the born poet with the tireless patience of
the trained artist.

But perhaps the most remarkable characteristic of Pope is his manly
independence.
In an age when almost without exception his fellow-writers
stooped to accept a great man's patronage or sold their talents into the
slavery of politics, Pope stood aloof from patron and from party. He
repeatedly declined offers of money that were made him, even when no
condition was attached. He refused to change his religion, though he was
far from being a devout Catholic, in order to secure a comfortable
place. He relied upon his genius alone for his support, and his genius
gave him all that he asked, a modest competency. His relations with his
rich and powerful friends were marked by the same independent spirit. He
never cringed or flattered, but met them on even terms, and raised
himself by merit alone from his position as the unknown son of an humble
shopkeeper to be the friend and associate of the greatest fortunes and
most powerful minds in England. It is not too much to say that the
career of a man of letters as we know it to-day, a career at once
honorable and independent, takes its rise from the life and work of
Alexander Pope.

The long controversies that have raged about Pope's rank as a poet seem
at last to be drawing to a close; and it has become possible to strike a
balance between the exaggerated praise of his contemporaries and the
reckless depreciation of romantic critics. That he is not a poet of the
first order is plain, if for no other reason than that he never produced
a work in any of the greatest forms of poetry. The drama, the epic, the
lyric, were all outside his range. On the other hand, unless a
definition of poetry be framed--and Dr. Johnson has well remarked that
"to circumscribe poetry by a definition will only show the narrowness of
the definer"--which shall exclude all gnomic and satiric verse, and so
debar the claims of Hesiod, Juvenal, and Boileau, it is impossible to
deny that Pope is a true poet. Certain qualities of the highest poet
Pope no doubt lacked, lofty imagination, intense passion, wide human
sympathy. But within the narrow field which he marked out for his own he
approaches perfection as nearly as any English poet, and Pope's merit
consists not merely in the smoothness of his verse or the polish of
separate epigrams, as is so often stated, but quite as much in the vigor
of his conceptions and the unity and careful proportion of each poem as
a whole. It is not too much to say that 'The Rape of the Lock' is one of
the best-planned poems in any language. It is as symmetrical and
exquisitely finished as a Grecian temple.