No More Learning

Beautifully situated on the banks of the Thames, it
was at once a quiet country place and yet of easy access to London, to
Hampton Court, or to Kew. The five acres of land that lay about the
house furnished Pope with inexhaustible entertainment for the rest of
his life. He "twisted and twirled and harmonized" his bit of ground
"till it appeared two or three sweet little lawns opening and opening
beyond one another, the whole surrounded by impenetrable woods. "
Following the taste of his times in landscape gardening, he adorned his
lawns with artificial mounds, a shell temple, an obelisk, and a
colonnade. But the crowning glory was the grotto, a tunnel decorated
fantastically with shells and bits of looking-glass, which Pope dug
under a road that ran through his grounds. Here Pope received in state,
and his house and garden was for years the center of the most brilliant
society in England. Here Swift came on his rare visits from Ireland, and
Bolingbroke on his return from exile. Arbuthnot, Pope's beloved
physician, was a frequent visitor, and Peterborough, one of the most
distinguished of English soldiers, condescended to help lay out the
garden. Congreve came too, at times, and Gay, the laziest and most
good-natured of poets. Nor was the society of women lacking at these
gatherings. Lady Mary Wortley Montague, the wittiest woman in England,
was often there, until her bitter quarrel with the poet; the grim old
Duchess of Marlborough appeared once or twice in Pope's last years; and
the Princess of Wales came with her husband to inspire the leaders of
the opposition to the hated Walpole and the miserly king. And from first
to last, the good angel of the place was the blue-eyed, sweet-tempered
Patty Blount, Pope's best and dearest friend.

Not long after the completion of the 'Iliad', Pope undertook to edit
Shakespeare, and completed the work in 1724. The edition is, of course,
quite superseded now, but it has its place in the history of
Shakespearean studies as the first that made an effort, though irregular
and incomplete, to restore the true text by collation and conjecture. It
has its place, too, in the story of Pope's life, since the bitter
criticism which it received, all the more unpleasant to the poet since
it was in the main true, was one of the principal causes of his writing
the 'Dunciad'.
Between the publication of his edition of Shakespeare,
however, and the appearance of the 'Dunciad', Pope resolved to complete
his translation of Homer, and with the assistance of a pair of friends,
got out a version of the Odyssey in 1725. Like the 'Iliad', this was
published by subscription, and as in the former case the greatest men in
England were eager to show their appreciation of the poet by filling up
his lists. Sir Robert Walpole, the great Whig statesman, took ten
copies, and Harley, the fallen Tory leader, put himself, his wife, and
his daughter down for sixteen. Pope made, it is said, about ? 3700 by
this work.

In 1726, Swift visited Pope and encouraged him to complete a satire
which he seems already to have begun on the dull critics and hack
writers of the day. For one cause or another its publication was
deferred until 1728, when it appeared under the title of the 'Dunciad'.
Here Pope declared open war upon his enemies. All those who had attacked
his works, abused his character, or scoffed at his personal deformities,
were caricatured as ridiculous and sometimes disgusting figures in a
mock epic poem celebrating the accession of a new monarch to the throne
of Dullness. The 'Dunciad' is little read to-day except by professed
students of English letters, but it made, naturally enough, a great stir
at the time and vastly provoked the wrath of all the dunces whose names
it dragged to light. Pope has often been blamed for stooping to such
ignoble combat, and in particular for the coarseness of his abuse, and
for his bitter jests upon the poverty of his opponents. But it must be
remembered that no living writer had been so scandalously abused as
Pope, and no writer that ever lived was by nature so quick to feel and
to resent insult. The undoubted coarseness of the work is in part due to
the gross license of the times in speech and writing, and more
particularly to the influence of Swift, at this time predominant over
Pope. And in regard to Pope's trick of taunting his enemies with
poverty, it must frankly be confessed that he seized upon this charge as
a ready and telling weapon. Pope was at heart one of the most charitable
of men. In the days of his prosperity he is said to have given away one
eighth of his income.