Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/585

 Pope's Blank Verse Epic 581 as it may be to know that Pope had completed the plan for an epic poem whose hero was Brutus, the great-grandson of ^neas, and that he had read in detail and revised the stories of Geoffrey of Monmouth, it would have been far more interesting if Ruff- head had given us, instead, the part of the MS in blank verse which, he said, lay before him as he wrote. What Ruffhead has told us about the design of Brutus is confirmed in part by the conversation which Pope had with his friend Joseph Spence. "The idea that I have had for an epic poem of late turns wholly on civil and ecclesiastical government. The hero is a prince who establishes an empire. That prince is our Brutus from Troy; and the scene of the establishment, England. The plan of government is much like our old original plan; supposed so much earlier: and the religion, introduced by him, is the belief of one God, and the doctrines of morality. Brutus is supposed to have travelled into Egypt; and there to have learnt the unity of the Deity, and the other purer doctrines afterwards kept up in the mysteries. Though there is none of it writ as yet, what I look upon as more than half the work is already done; for 'tis all exactly planned." Spence: "It would take you up ten years?" Pope: "Oh much less, I should think, as the matter is already quite digested and prepared." Since Ruff head's biography of Pope appeared in 1769 and Spence's Anecdotes were printed in 1820 (they had circulated in MS ever since Spence's death in 1768), it seems a pity that the whole matter has been so sadly neglected by most of Pope's editors and biographers. I have looked in vain through so many editions of Pope's complete works so called without finding the blank verse lines from Brutus, that I am inclined to hazard the sweeping statement that they have never been printed. The neglect of the epic by biographers has been almost as startling as by editors. Two or three brief sentences, showing only a knowledge of Pope's conversation with Spence, is usually the limit of the comment; for instance, Robert Carruthers (1853) remarks rather fantastically, I think, Among the other plans of Pope was an epic poem, to be entitled 'Brutus,' the hero of which was to attempt the great ocean in search of a new country, and, encounter, like yneas, long perils both by sea and land. There seems to be no part of this epic written. It was a mere vision, like the poet's grand architectural designs, and was equally unattainable by his resources.