No More Learning

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.

Historically Pope represents the fullest embodiment of that spirit which
began to appear in English literature about the middle of the
seventeenth century, and which we are accustomed to call the "classical"
spirit. In essence this movement was a protest against the irregularity
and individual license of earlier poets. Instead of far-fetched wit and
fanciful diction, the classical school erected the standards of common
sense in conception and directness in expression. And in so doing they
restored poetry which had become the diversion of the few to the
possession of the many. Pope, for example, is preeminently the poet of
his time. He dealt with topics that were of general interest to the
society in which he lived; he pictured life as he saw it about him.
And
this accounts for his prompt and general acceptance by the world of his
day.

For the student of English literature Pope's work has a threefold value.
It represents the highest achievement of one of the great movements in
the developments of English verse. It reflects with unerring accuracy
the life and thought of his time--not merely the outward life of beau
and belle in the days of Queen Anne, but the ideals of the age in art,
philosophy, and politics. And finally it teaches as hardly any other
body of English verse can be said to do, the perennial value of
conscious and controlling art. Pope's work lives and will live while
English poetry is read, not because of its inspiration, imagination, or
depth of thought, but by its unity of design, vigor of expression, and
perfection of finish--by those qualities, in short, which show the poet
as an artist in verse.



CHIEF DATES IN POPE'S LIFE

1688 Born, May 21.

1700 Moves to Binfield.

1709 'Pastorals'.

1711 'Essay on Criticism'.

1711-12 Contributes to 'Spectator'.

1712 'Rape of the Lock', first form.

1713 'Windsor Forest'.

1713 Issues proposals for translation of Homer.

1714 'Rape of the Lock', second form.

1715 First volume of the 'Iliad'.