Big Red Jeff Rubard
2010-02-04 04:22:32 UTC
Notes on Life and Works
Alexander Pope, born in London at 6:45 p.m. on 21 May 1688 to linen
merchant Alexander Pope and his second wife Edith Turner Pope, became
the defining poetic force of his age. His poetic accomplishments
contrast sharply with the physical disabilities and trying
circumstances that plagued him. As a child, he survived being trampled
by a cow but struggled with tuberculosis of the spine (Potts’ Disease)
and crippling headaches throughout his life. The poet and his family
also fell victim to the repressive measures taken against Catholics
after the abdication of King James II and the ascension of the
Protestant William and Mary, including prohibitions against openly
practicing their faith and against living within ten miles of London.
Later, Pope’s Catholicism would effectively bar him from the kind of
open patronage by members of the court that had provided poets like
John Dryden with a living. Pope’s poetic career testifies to his
resiliency in the face of disadvantages of health and circumstance.
Pope’s family lived in London until 1700 when the poet’s now-retired
father moved the household to the village of Binfield in Windsor
Forest. The move introduced Pope to the countryside that would inspire
his early pastorals, and the ambitious georgic Windsor-Forest (1713).
Pope’s early schooling was erratic and his faith precluded his
attending university, but he became a model autodidact after the move
to Binfield. He taught himself Latin, Greek, French, and Italian, and
the mark of his success lies in his translations of Homer, his
imitations of Horace, and, more broadly, in his close relationship
with many of the best minds of his time including Jonathan Swift and,
later, Henry St. John, Lord Bolingbroke. According to Reuben Brower,
“Pope became after Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton the most European
of English poets” (The Poetry of Allusion) because his learning and
facility with Latin and Greek allowed him to follow and surpass
Dryden’s example as a poet, critic, and translator.
Like Dryden, much of Pope’s poetry, and all of his major poems, are
inextricably linked to his mastery of the heroic couplet. Aubrey
Williams goes so far as to praise Pope’s early Pastorals for
introducing “a couplet style more refined and musical than any before
in English versification” (DLB 95). In Pope’s hands a form that has
since gone progressively moribund, but which was ubiquitous in his
day, could move seamlessly from pastoral to satire to epic or moral
epistle and be consistently effective.
His Essay on Criticism (1711) established Pope as a significant poetic
voice. It also prompted the first of many printed, personal attacks.
John Dennis, a prominent critic whom Pope ridiculed in the Essay,
aimed his venomous response at Pope’s ailing body, his character, and
his religious faith. Joseph Addison, on the other hand, praised Pope
for both insight and execution, and Samuel Johnson later hailed the
poem for exhibiting “every mode of excellence that can embellish or
dignify didactick composition” (Life of Pope). Windsor-Forest, The
Rape of the Lock, and The Temple of Fame followed and confirmed Pope’s
place among celebrated poets, a place marked again by the publication
of The Works of Mr. Alexander Pope. Pope was only 29.
If Pope’s translations of Homer have received less attention than his
other works over the years, it is only because translations rarely
receive their due. He spent nearly a decade translating Homer’s Greek
into English heroic couplets and may have damaged his fragile health
in the process. The success of the result entrenched Pope as his
generation’s foremost man of letters. More importantly, Pope achieved
financial security and independence through subscription sales of his
translations, an accomplishment that allowed him to “retire” to a
villa at Twickenham.
Pope cultivated his public persona throughout his career, presenting
himself as the union of moral philosopher and inspired poet. This
persona was vital to the satires and epistles that have stood as
perhaps his most characteristic and enduring legacy. The moral arbiter
who had gently chastised Robert Lord Petre and Arabella Fermor in the
Rape of the Lock proceeded to far more aggressive mock-heroic verses
in The Dunciad before following the Roman poet Horace’s model of
witty, urbane epistles on serious subjects and mocking satires. The
epistle was to be a dominant form for the rest of Pope’s career
including the Moral Essays, the Essay on Man, the Epistle to Dr.
Arbuthnot, and the Imitations of Horace.
Pope rarely followed another poet’s example without excelling his
model (his edition of Shakespeare being a notable exception). It might
be going too far to say Pope excelled Horace, but he certainly
surpassed his predecessors in the form of creative translation called
Imitation. Abraham Cowley, John Oldham, Dryden, and the Earl of
Rochester had all engaged in a form of both translating and
transforming classical texts to their own ends, but in Pope’s hands
the form became more flexible, multifaceted, resonant.
Much of Pope’s satirical verse was motivated by either his disdain for
the legion of inferior writers who attacked him in print, and for many
others whose only crime was their inferiority in Pope’s estimation, or
his political agenda. Pope followed Bolingbroke in opposing the
government of Prime Minister Robert Walpole, and even directed barbs
at George III in The First Satire of the Second Book of Horace
Imitated, subtitled ‘To Augustus’. It was one of two significant and
protracted battles Pope would lose, and his late poems, such as One
Thousand Seven Hundred and Forty, are coloured by a degree of despair
on the poet’s part. The other battle was with his always-fragile
health. Alexander Pope died on 30 May 1744, just over a week past his
56th birthday.
Biographical information
Given name: Alexander
Family name: Pope
Birth date: 21 May 1688
Death date: 30 May 1744
Nationality: English
Family relations
father: Alexander Pope
mother: Edith Pope
sister: Magdalen Rackett
Languages
English
French
Italian
Latin
Greek
Education
Roman Catholic school at Twyford, near Winchester: 1697
School at Marylebone kept by Thomas Deane
School at Hyde Park Corner, kept by Thomas Deane
Religion: Roman Catholic
Politics: Tory
Patron: William Walsh
Literary period: Augustan
Residences
Lombard Street, London: 21 May 1688 to 1700
Binfield: 1700 to April 1716
Mawson's Buildings, Chiswick: April 1716
Twickenham: 1719 to 30 May 1744
Illness: Headache
Buried at: Twickenham Church
First RPO edition: 1997
Ian Lancashire
------
Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady
WHAT beck'ning ghost, along the moonlight shade
Invites my steps, and points to yonder glade?
'Tis she!—but why that bleeding bosom gored,
Why dimly gleams the visionary sword?
O, ever beauteous, ever friendly! tell, 5
Is it, in Heav'n, a crime to love too well?
To bear too tender or too firm a heart,
To act a lover's or a Roman's part?
Is there no bright reversion in the sky
For those who greatly think, or bravely die? 10
Why bade ye else, ye Pow'rs! her soul aspire
Above the vulgar flight of low desire?
Ambition first sprung from your blest abodes;
The glorious fault of angels and of gods;
Thence to their images on earth it flows, 15
And in the breasts of kings and heroes glows.
Most souls, 'tis true, but peep out once an age,
Dull sullen pris'ners in the body's cage:
Dim lights of life, that burn a length of years,
Useless, unseen, as lamps in sepulchres; 20
Like Eastern kings a lazy state they keep,
And close confined to their own palace, sleep.
From these perhaps (ere Nature bade her die)
Fate snatch'd her early to the pitying sky.
As into air the purer spirits flow, 25
And sep'rate from their kindred dregs below,
So flew the soul to its congenial place,
Nor left one virtue to redeem her race.
But thou, false guardian of a charge too good!
Thou, mean deserter of thy brother's blood! 30
See on these ruby lips the trembling breath,
These cheeks now fading at the blast of Death:
Cold is that breast which warm'd the world before,
And those love-darting eyes must roll no more.
Thus, if eternal Justice rules the ball, 35
Thus shall your wives, and thus your children fall;
On all the line a sudden vengeance waits,
And frequent herses shall besiege your gates.
There passengers shall stand, and pointing say
(While the long fun'rals blacken all the way), 40
'Lo! these were they whose souls the Furies steel'd
And cursed with hearts unknowing how to yield.'
Thus unlamented pass the proud away,
The gaze of fools, and pageant of a day!
So perish all whose breast ne'er learn'd to glow 45
For others' good, or melt at others' woe!
What can atone (O ever-injured shade!)
Thy fate unpitied, and thy rites unpaid?
No friend's complaint, no kind domestic tear
Pleased thy pale ghost, or graced thy mournful bier. 50
By foreign hands thy dying eyes were closed,
By foreign hands thy decent limbs composed,
By foreign hands thy humble grave adorn'd,
By strangers honour'd, and by strangers mourn'd!
What tho' no friends in sable weeds appear, 55
Grieve for an hour, perhaps, then mourn a year,
And bear about the mockery of woe
To midnight dances, and the public show?
What tho' no weeping Loves thy ashes grace,
Nor polish'd marble emulate thy face? 60
What tho' no sacred earth allow thee room,
Nor hallow'd dirge be mutter'd o'er thy tomb?
Yet shall thy grave with rising flow'rs be drest,
And the green turf lie lightly on thy breast:
There shall the morn her earliest tears bestow, 65
There the first roses of the year shall blow;
While angels with their silver wings o'ershade
The ground now sacred by thy reliques made.
So peaceful rests, without a stone, a name,
What once had beauty, titles, wealth, and fame. 70
How loved, how honour'd once, avails thee not,
To whom related, or by whom begot;
A heap of dust alone remains of thee,
'Tis all thou art, and all the proud shall be!
Poets themselves must fall, like those they sung, 75
Deaf the praised ear, and mute the tuneful tongue.
Ev'n he, whose soul now melts in mournful lays,
Shall shortly want the gen'rous tear he pays;
Then from this closing eyes thy form shall part,
And the last pang shall tear thee from his heart; 80
Life's idle business at one gasp be o'er,
The Muse forgot, and thou beloved no more!
------
Pope etexts:
http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poet/263.html
------
LEGALITY HAIL!
Clevah, ¿No?
Ans: ¡Si¡
The "coin of the realm".
Alexander Pope, born in London at 6:45 p.m. on 21 May 1688 to linen
merchant Alexander Pope and his second wife Edith Turner Pope, became
the defining poetic force of his age. His poetic accomplishments
contrast sharply with the physical disabilities and trying
circumstances that plagued him. As a child, he survived being trampled
by a cow but struggled with tuberculosis of the spine (Potts’ Disease)
and crippling headaches throughout his life. The poet and his family
also fell victim to the repressive measures taken against Catholics
after the abdication of King James II and the ascension of the
Protestant William and Mary, including prohibitions against openly
practicing their faith and against living within ten miles of London.
Later, Pope’s Catholicism would effectively bar him from the kind of
open patronage by members of the court that had provided poets like
John Dryden with a living. Pope’s poetic career testifies to his
resiliency in the face of disadvantages of health and circumstance.
Pope’s family lived in London until 1700 when the poet’s now-retired
father moved the household to the village of Binfield in Windsor
Forest. The move introduced Pope to the countryside that would inspire
his early pastorals, and the ambitious georgic Windsor-Forest (1713).
Pope’s early schooling was erratic and his faith precluded his
attending university, but he became a model autodidact after the move
to Binfield. He taught himself Latin, Greek, French, and Italian, and
the mark of his success lies in his translations of Homer, his
imitations of Horace, and, more broadly, in his close relationship
with many of the best minds of his time including Jonathan Swift and,
later, Henry St. John, Lord Bolingbroke. According to Reuben Brower,
“Pope became after Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton the most European
of English poets” (The Poetry of Allusion) because his learning and
facility with Latin and Greek allowed him to follow and surpass
Dryden’s example as a poet, critic, and translator.
Like Dryden, much of Pope’s poetry, and all of his major poems, are
inextricably linked to his mastery of the heroic couplet. Aubrey
Williams goes so far as to praise Pope’s early Pastorals for
introducing “a couplet style more refined and musical than any before
in English versification” (DLB 95). In Pope’s hands a form that has
since gone progressively moribund, but which was ubiquitous in his
day, could move seamlessly from pastoral to satire to epic or moral
epistle and be consistently effective.
His Essay on Criticism (1711) established Pope as a significant poetic
voice. It also prompted the first of many printed, personal attacks.
John Dennis, a prominent critic whom Pope ridiculed in the Essay,
aimed his venomous response at Pope’s ailing body, his character, and
his religious faith. Joseph Addison, on the other hand, praised Pope
for both insight and execution, and Samuel Johnson later hailed the
poem for exhibiting “every mode of excellence that can embellish or
dignify didactick composition” (Life of Pope). Windsor-Forest, The
Rape of the Lock, and The Temple of Fame followed and confirmed Pope’s
place among celebrated poets, a place marked again by the publication
of The Works of Mr. Alexander Pope. Pope was only 29.
If Pope’s translations of Homer have received less attention than his
other works over the years, it is only because translations rarely
receive their due. He spent nearly a decade translating Homer’s Greek
into English heroic couplets and may have damaged his fragile health
in the process. The success of the result entrenched Pope as his
generation’s foremost man of letters. More importantly, Pope achieved
financial security and independence through subscription sales of his
translations, an accomplishment that allowed him to “retire” to a
villa at Twickenham.
Pope cultivated his public persona throughout his career, presenting
himself as the union of moral philosopher and inspired poet. This
persona was vital to the satires and epistles that have stood as
perhaps his most characteristic and enduring legacy. The moral arbiter
who had gently chastised Robert Lord Petre and Arabella Fermor in the
Rape of the Lock proceeded to far more aggressive mock-heroic verses
in The Dunciad before following the Roman poet Horace’s model of
witty, urbane epistles on serious subjects and mocking satires. The
epistle was to be a dominant form for the rest of Pope’s career
including the Moral Essays, the Essay on Man, the Epistle to Dr.
Arbuthnot, and the Imitations of Horace.
Pope rarely followed another poet’s example without excelling his
model (his edition of Shakespeare being a notable exception). It might
be going too far to say Pope excelled Horace, but he certainly
surpassed his predecessors in the form of creative translation called
Imitation. Abraham Cowley, John Oldham, Dryden, and the Earl of
Rochester had all engaged in a form of both translating and
transforming classical texts to their own ends, but in Pope’s hands
the form became more flexible, multifaceted, resonant.
Much of Pope’s satirical verse was motivated by either his disdain for
the legion of inferior writers who attacked him in print, and for many
others whose only crime was their inferiority in Pope’s estimation, or
his political agenda. Pope followed Bolingbroke in opposing the
government of Prime Minister Robert Walpole, and even directed barbs
at George III in The First Satire of the Second Book of Horace
Imitated, subtitled ‘To Augustus’. It was one of two significant and
protracted battles Pope would lose, and his late poems, such as One
Thousand Seven Hundred and Forty, are coloured by a degree of despair
on the poet’s part. The other battle was with his always-fragile
health. Alexander Pope died on 30 May 1744, just over a week past his
56th birthday.
Biographical information
Given name: Alexander
Family name: Pope
Birth date: 21 May 1688
Death date: 30 May 1744
Nationality: English
Family relations
father: Alexander Pope
mother: Edith Pope
sister: Magdalen Rackett
Languages
English
French
Italian
Latin
Greek
Education
Roman Catholic school at Twyford, near Winchester: 1697
School at Marylebone kept by Thomas Deane
School at Hyde Park Corner, kept by Thomas Deane
Religion: Roman Catholic
Politics: Tory
Patron: William Walsh
Literary period: Augustan
Residences
Lombard Street, London: 21 May 1688 to 1700
Binfield: 1700 to April 1716
Mawson's Buildings, Chiswick: April 1716
Twickenham: 1719 to 30 May 1744
Illness: Headache
Buried at: Twickenham Church
First RPO edition: 1997
Ian Lancashire
------
Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady
WHAT beck'ning ghost, along the moonlight shade
Invites my steps, and points to yonder glade?
'Tis she!—but why that bleeding bosom gored,
Why dimly gleams the visionary sword?
O, ever beauteous, ever friendly! tell, 5
Is it, in Heav'n, a crime to love too well?
To bear too tender or too firm a heart,
To act a lover's or a Roman's part?
Is there no bright reversion in the sky
For those who greatly think, or bravely die? 10
Why bade ye else, ye Pow'rs! her soul aspire
Above the vulgar flight of low desire?
Ambition first sprung from your blest abodes;
The glorious fault of angels and of gods;
Thence to their images on earth it flows, 15
And in the breasts of kings and heroes glows.
Most souls, 'tis true, but peep out once an age,
Dull sullen pris'ners in the body's cage:
Dim lights of life, that burn a length of years,
Useless, unseen, as lamps in sepulchres; 20
Like Eastern kings a lazy state they keep,
And close confined to their own palace, sleep.
From these perhaps (ere Nature bade her die)
Fate snatch'd her early to the pitying sky.
As into air the purer spirits flow, 25
And sep'rate from their kindred dregs below,
So flew the soul to its congenial place,
Nor left one virtue to redeem her race.
But thou, false guardian of a charge too good!
Thou, mean deserter of thy brother's blood! 30
See on these ruby lips the trembling breath,
These cheeks now fading at the blast of Death:
Cold is that breast which warm'd the world before,
And those love-darting eyes must roll no more.
Thus, if eternal Justice rules the ball, 35
Thus shall your wives, and thus your children fall;
On all the line a sudden vengeance waits,
And frequent herses shall besiege your gates.
There passengers shall stand, and pointing say
(While the long fun'rals blacken all the way), 40
'Lo! these were they whose souls the Furies steel'd
And cursed with hearts unknowing how to yield.'
Thus unlamented pass the proud away,
The gaze of fools, and pageant of a day!
So perish all whose breast ne'er learn'd to glow 45
For others' good, or melt at others' woe!
What can atone (O ever-injured shade!)
Thy fate unpitied, and thy rites unpaid?
No friend's complaint, no kind domestic tear
Pleased thy pale ghost, or graced thy mournful bier. 50
By foreign hands thy dying eyes were closed,
By foreign hands thy decent limbs composed,
By foreign hands thy humble grave adorn'd,
By strangers honour'd, and by strangers mourn'd!
What tho' no friends in sable weeds appear, 55
Grieve for an hour, perhaps, then mourn a year,
And bear about the mockery of woe
To midnight dances, and the public show?
What tho' no weeping Loves thy ashes grace,
Nor polish'd marble emulate thy face? 60
What tho' no sacred earth allow thee room,
Nor hallow'd dirge be mutter'd o'er thy tomb?
Yet shall thy grave with rising flow'rs be drest,
And the green turf lie lightly on thy breast:
There shall the morn her earliest tears bestow, 65
There the first roses of the year shall blow;
While angels with their silver wings o'ershade
The ground now sacred by thy reliques made.
So peaceful rests, without a stone, a name,
What once had beauty, titles, wealth, and fame. 70
How loved, how honour'd once, avails thee not,
To whom related, or by whom begot;
A heap of dust alone remains of thee,
'Tis all thou art, and all the proud shall be!
Poets themselves must fall, like those they sung, 75
Deaf the praised ear, and mute the tuneful tongue.
Ev'n he, whose soul now melts in mournful lays,
Shall shortly want the gen'rous tear he pays;
Then from this closing eyes thy form shall part,
And the last pang shall tear thee from his heart; 80
Life's idle business at one gasp be o'er,
The Muse forgot, and thou beloved no more!
------
Pope etexts:
http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poet/263.html
------
LEGALITY HAIL!
Clevah, ¿No?
Ans: ¡Si¡
The "coin of the realm".