Alexander Pope

The Critical Heritage

John Barnard

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2003
• Print ISBN: 9780415134323
• eBook ISBN: 9781134782567
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

The Critical Heritage gathers together a large body of critical sources on major figures in literature. Each volume presents contemporary responses to a writer's work, enabling students and researchers to read for themselves, for example, comments on early performances of Shakespeare's plays, or reactions to the first publication of Jane Austen's novels.
The carefully selected sources range from landmark essays in the history of criticism to journalism and contemporary opinion, and little published documentary material such as letters and diaries. Significant pieces of criticism from later periods are also included, in order to demonstrate the fluctuations in an author's reputation.
Each volume contains an introduction to the writer's published works, a selected bibliography, and an index of works, authors and subjects.
The Collected Critical Heritage set will be available as a set of 68 volumes and the series will also be available in mini sets selected by period (in slipcase boxes) and as individual volumes.

Part I

Contemporary Criticism

1705–44

GENERAL REACTIONS

1705–20

1. Wycherley welcomes the young poet

April 1705

William Wycherley, extract from letter to Pope, 7 April 1705, Corresp., i. 6–7.

Wycherley (1640?–1716), the aging poet and dramatist, quickly befriended the young poet. In return Pope helped Wycherley correct his poems, which later led to an estrangement between the two men. On their relationship, see Spence, Anecdotes, i. 32–41. Wycherley saw the manuscript version of the Pastorals, not published till 1709.

As to my enquiry after your Intrigues with the Muses, you may allow me to make it, since no old Man can give so young, so great, so able a Favourite of theirs, Jealousy. I am, in my Enquiry, like old Sir Bernard Gascoign,¹ who us'd to say, That when he was grown too old to have his Visits admitted alone by the Ladies, he always took along with him a young Man, to ensure his Welcome to them; who, had he come alone had been rejected, only because his Visits were not scandalous to them. So I am (like an old Rook, who is ruin'd by Gaming) forc'd to live on the good Fortune of the pushing young Man, whose Fancies are so vigorous, that they ensure their Success in their Adventures with the Muses, by the Strength of their Imagination.

¹ [An Italian who served Charles I, and was favoured in Charles II's court]

2. Opinions of Gay and Addison

May, October 1712

Here Gay and Addison give their reactions to Lintot's Miscellaneous Poems and Translations (1712), which Pope himself probably edited. It was advertised in The Spectator on 20 May 1712, and included The Rape of the Lock, along with other of Pope's early poems.

(a) John Gay (1685–1732), extract from ‘On a Miscellany of Poems’, Miscellaneous Poems and Translations (1712). The lines refer to the Pastorals and possibly to an early version of Windsor Forest:

When Pope's harmonious Muse with pleasure roves,

Amidst the Plains, the murm'ring Streams, and Groves,

Attentive Eccho pleas'd to hear his Songs,

Thro’ the glad Shade each warbling Note prolongs;

His various Numbers charm our ravish'd Ears,

His steady Judgment far out-shoots his Years,

And early in the Youth the God appears.

(b) Joseph Addison (1672–1719), extract from The Spectator, no. 523, 30 October 1712, ed. D. F. Bond (1965), iv. 361:

I am always highly delighted with the Discovery of any rising Genius among my Countrymen. For this Reason I have read over, with great Pleasure, the late Miscellany published by Mr. Pope, in which there are many Excellent Compositions of that ingenious Gentleman.

3. John Dennis's ‘Character’ of Pope

May 1716

John Dennis, A True Character of Mr. Pope, and His Writings (1716), Critical Works, ii. 103–8. A True Character is dated 7 May, and was published 31 May 1716.

John Dennis (1657–1734), critic and dramatist, was one of Pope's more persistent butts. For his first attack on Pope see No. 10. E. N. Hooker (ed. cit., ii. 458) accepts A True Character as Dennis's, although Pope thought that both Dennis and Charles Gildon were involved. This attack is given in full as an example of one of the more venomous assaults on his name and character, and as one which wounded him particularly. For a fuller discussion of Dennis's authorship, and a defence, see E. N. Hooker, ‘Pope and Dennis’, English Literary History, vii (1940), 188–98.

To Mr.——

SIR,

I have read over the Libel,¹ which I received from you the Day before Yesterday. Yesterday I received the same from another Hand with this Character of the Secret Author of so much stupid Calumny.

That² [Pope] is one, whom God and Nature have mark'd for want of Common Honesty, and his own Contemptible Rhimes for want of Common Sense, that those Rhimes have found great Success with the Rabble, which is a Word almost as comprehensive as Mankind; but that the Town, which supports him, will do by him, as the Dolphin did by the Ship-wrack'd Monkey, drop him as soon as it finds him out to be a Beast, whom it fondly now mistakes for a Human Creature. 'Tis, says he, a very little but very comprehensive Creature, in whom all Contradictions meet, and all Contrarieties are reconcil'd; when at one and the same time, like the Ancient Centaurs, he is a Beast and a Man, a Whig and a Tory, a virulent Papist and yet forsooth, a Pillar of the Church of England, a Writer at one and the same time, of GUARDIANS and of EXAMINERS,¹ an assertor of Liberty and of the Dispensing Power of Kings; a Rhimester without Judgment or Reason, and a Critick without Common Sense; a Jesuitical Professor of Truth, a base and foul Pretender to Candour; a Barbarous Wretch, who is perpetually boasting of Humanity and Good Nature, a lurking way-laying Coward, and a Stabber in the Dark; who is always pretending to Magnanimity, and to sum up all Villains in one, a Traytor-Friend, one who has betrayed all Mankind, and seems to have taken his great Rule of Life from the following lines of Hudibras.₂

For 'tis easier to Betray

Than Ruin any other way,

As th’ Earth is soonest undermin'd,

By vermin Impotent and Blind.

He is a Professor of the worst Religion, which he laughs at, and yet has most inviolably observ'd the most execrable Maxim in it, That no Faith is to be kept with Hereticks. A wretch, whose true Religion is his Interest, and yet so stupidly blind to that Interest, that he often meets her, without knowing her, and very grosly Affronts her. His Villainy is but the natural Effect of his want of Understanding, as the sowerness of Vinegar proceeds from its want of Spirit; and yet, says My Friend, notwithstanding that Shape and that Mind of his, some Men of good Understanding, value him for his Rhimes, as they would be fond of an Asscinego, that could sing his part in a Catch, or of a Baboon that could whistle Walsingham. The grosser part of his gentle Readers believe the Beast to be more than Man; as Ancient Rusticks took his Ancestors for those Demy-Gods they call Fauns and Satyrs.

This was the Character, which my Friend gave of the Author of this miserable Libel, which immediately made me apprehend that it was the very same Person, who endeavour'd to expose you in a Billinsgate Libel, at the very time that you were doing him a Favour at his own earnest Desire, who attempted to undermine Mr. PHILIPS in one of his Guardians,³ at the same time that the Crocodile smil'd on him, embrac'd him, and called him Friend, who wrote a Prologue in praise of CATO, and teaz'd Lintott to publish Remarks upon it;⁴ who at the same time, that he openly extoll'd Sir Richard Steele in the highest manner, secretly publish'd the Infamous Libel of Dr. Andrew Tripe⁵ upon him; who, as he is in Shape a Monkey, is so in his every Action; in his senseless Chattering, and his merry Grimaces, in his doing hourly M...

Table of contents

• Fornt Cover
• Half Title
• THE CRITICAL HERITAGE SERIES
• Title Page
• Copyright
• General Editor’s Preface
• Contents
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• ABBREVIATIONS
• PREFACE
• INTRODUCTION
• NOTE ON THE TEXT
• PART I CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM 1705–44
• PART II LATER CRITICISM 1745–82
• APPENDIX A Pope on Versification (1706?)
• APPENDIX B ‘The Ballance of Poets’ (1745)
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• INDEX