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POPE

many as 4000 lines, was laid aside and never completed. Pope's first publication was the "Pastorals"; "Jan- uary and INIay", the latter a version of Chaucer's "ISIerchant's Tale"; and the "Episode of Sarpedon" from the "Iliad". These appeared in 1709 in Ton- son's "Poetical Miscellanies". His "Essay on Criti- cism" appeared in May, 1711, and some months later was warmly, if not enthusiastically, commended by Addison in the "Spectator" (Xo. 253, 20 Dec, 1711). Steele was eager to get hold of the rising poet to con- tribute to the paper, and eventually succeeded, for practically the entire literary portion of one issue of the "Spectator" (No. 378, 14 May, 1712) is given over to Pope's "Messiah: A Sacred Eclogue". In 1712 the first edition of "The Rape of the Lock", in two cantos, came out in Lint ot 's " Kliscellany ". Later Pope extended the work to five cantos, and by introducing the supernatural machinery of .sylphs and gnomes and all the light militia of the lower sky, he gave to the world in 1714 one of its airiest, most delightful, and most cherished specimens of the mock-heroic poem. In the April of tlie preceding )'ear (1713), .Addi- son's tragedy of "Cato" was produced with almost unparal- leled success at Drury Lane Theatre and the prologue, a dignified and spirited com- position, as Macaulay describes it, was written by Pope. It was published with the play and also in No. 33 of the "Guardian". To the "Guar- dian" also Pope contributed eight papers in 1713. In the same year he published his "Windsor Forest" and the "Ode on St. Cecilia's Dav". "The Wife of Bath", from Chaucer, and two translations from the "Odyssey " — the ' Ar- rival of Ulysses at Ithaca" and the "Garden of .'Alcinous'' — came out in 1714 in a vol- ume of miscellanies edited by Steele for Tonson, the pub- ■""'

lisher. "The Temple of Fame", in which Steele said there were a thousand beauties, was separately pub- lished in the following year, 1715.

In November of 17115 a turning point was reached in Pope's fortunes. He issued proposals for the pub- lication, by subscription, of a translation of Homer's "Iliad" into English verse, with notes. The matter was warmly taken up, and subscriptions poured in apace. His friends stood by him. Swift in par- ticular obtaining a long list of influential patrons. Work w!i.s at once begun on the undertaking, and the first four books appeared in 1715, the remain- ing volumes coming out at intervals in 1716, 1717, 1718, and 1720, when the task was completed. Three years later he undertook the translation of the "Odyssey", which, with the aid of Broome and Fen- ton as collaborators, he completed by 1726. Pope's exact share was twelve books; the rest were by his assistants. By Homer Pope made close on £9000, which, added to what his father had left him, placed him in a position of inflependence for the remainder of his life. While engaged on his great trans- lation Pope found time for other forms of literary work, and in 1717 he published two of the very best of his lyrics, namely, the "Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady" and the "Epistle of Eloisa to Abelard". and he joined with Gay and Arbuthnot in writing and producing the unsuccessful farce "Three Hours after Marriage". He also undertook for Ton-

son, the publisher, an annotated edition of Shake- speare, which appeared in 1725, a task for which Pope's powers were unequal, for he was not sufficiently versed in the literature of the Elizabethan and Jacobean period, and although the preface is very fine and many shrewd emendations were made in the text, Pope's Shakespeare was on the whole far from being a success. It was at once attacked by Theobald, who thus exposed himself to the character- istic vengeance which Pope was shortly to take by raakinghimthefirstheroof the"Dunciad". In 1713-14 Pope, with Swift, Arbuthnot, and other leaders of the Tory Party, had formed a sort of literary society called the Scriblerus Club, and had amused them- selves by burlesquing the ^•agaries of literature in the ' ' M emoirs of M art inus Scriblerus ", which, alt hough in- cluded in the edition of Pope's prose works in 1741, was mainly the composition of Arbuthnot. Arising partly out of the performance (if "Scriblerus", Pope and Swift published in 1727-28 t hree volumes of their " Miscel- lanies", which contained among other things Pope's "Treatise on the Bathos, or the Art of Sinking in Poetry", illustrated by examples from the inferior poets of the day. These "Miscellanies", and par- ticularly the "Bathos", drew down upon the authors a tor- rent of abuse from every quill- driver and poetaster who had iieen in reality attacked or fan- cied himself ridiculed. The "Dunciad" was in turn the outcome of these invectives. This celebrated satire first ap- peared, in three books, in May, 1728, and an enlarged edition followed in 1729. In 1742 a further issue appeared with the addition of a fourth book, and in 1743 the poem came out in its final form with Theobald dethroned and Colley Gibber installed in his room " '"''^ as King of the Dunces. The

publication of this swingeing satire naturally increased the furj' against Pope, who was roundly abused in all tfie moods and tenses. Nor did he shrink from the fray. He gave back blow for blow for eight years, 1730-37, in a weekly sheet, the" Grub Street Journal ", as well as paying off old scores when opportunity offered in his avowed and more ambitious publications.

While thus engaged Pope came more directly than ever before under the influence of Bolingbroke, with whom he had been on intimate terms in the palmy pre-Georgian days. BoUngbroke undoubtedly indoc- trinated Pope with the tenets of his own system of metaphysics and natural theology, and the fruit was seen in the "Essay on Man", in four "Epistles" (1732-34), and in the "Moral Essays", also in four "Epistles" (1731-35). The fifth Epistle— "To Mr. Addison, occasioned by his 'Dialogues on Medals' "— placed arbitrarily enough by Warburton in this series of "Moral Essays", was actually written in 1715, and has appeared in Tickell's edition of Addi- son's works in 1720. Bolingbroke, in another con- nexion, once said of Pope that he was "a very great wit, but a verj' indifferent philosopher"; and in these "Essays", especially in the "Essay on Alan", he was endeavouring to expound a system of philosophy which he but imperfectly understood. The result is that the tendency of his principal theories is towards fatahsm and naturalism, and the consequent reduc- tion of man to a mere puppet. This position Pope