CHAPTER VIII. THE QUEEN ANNE AND GEORGIAN POETS. ALEXANDER POPE-SAMUEL JOHNSON-OLIVER Gold SMITH. Edmund Waller, 1605-1687. WHEN Dryden was a young man, and long before he achieved reputation as a poet, Edmund Waller's fame was established. His "smooth" poems, published in 1645, were highly popular, and received a degree of praise which the judgment of a later age has not confirmed. Dryden joined in this praise, observing that he showed poets how to conclude the sense in distichs, and that "the excellence and dignity of rhyme were never fully known till Mr. Waller taught it." Four years after Dryden's death, Joseph Addison, known to us now as an incomparable humorist and essayist, gained his first laurels as a poet by the publication of "The Campaign." Waller may have known the youthful Dryden before his genius was fledged, and Addison knew him in the maturity of his powers. Viewed, therefore, chronologically, Waller may be Joseph Addison, 1672-1719. called Dryden's father and Addison his son; but both these men are now virtually dead as poets, or if they live at all, and may not be dropped entirely out of the succession, the life of Waller hangs upon two lyrics, and that of Addison upon two or three fine hymns. It may perhaps be a question who is entitled to be called Dryden's father in poetry, but there can be no doubt that Pope is his legitimate son. There were several poets or versemen in the first half of the eighteenth century, but there is not one who stands out so prominently as Pope. And the fame he won in his own day can scarcely be said to have much diminished with time. We cannot think of him, indeed, as his contemporaries thought. Greater poets than Pope had lived before his age, and greater poets have lived since. Modern. criticism has treated him with the utmost severity, and not always with injustice. Into the highest and purest region of poetry Pope never entered, and in his own sphere his genius has so many flaws that the pleasure we gain from his verse is largely mixed with pain. His defects alike as a man and as a poet stand out prominently, but there is much notwithstanding, both in his life and in his poetry, to excite the strongest interest. I do not know whether young students will feel this. Pope's treacherous and ignoble vices will disgust, as well they may, the generous frankness of youthful readers, and the wit and satire, the point and verve, which make his lines so fascinating to older men, may be lost in a measure on their juniors. For Pope wants the poetical qualities which they can. best appreciate-breadth of imagination, fervour of passion, enthusiasm for what is noble, an earnest faith in what is good. With all his gifts he lacks sincerity, and whether he writes letters or poems his sentiment sounds hollow. Not that Pope was altogether a hypocrite. He meant much that he said, and probably thought that he meant much more. He may have deceived himself even in cases when the desire to deceive others appears palpable. He wished to be thought a good man ; but above all he coveted literary fame, and to gain this was content to wander in crooked paths, which led him further and further astray. Alexander Pope was born in London in 1688, the year of the Revolution. His Alexander Pope, 1688-1744. father, having amassed a sufficient income by trade, retired soon after his son's birth to Binfield, about nine miles from Windsor, and there, on the skirts of the forest, the future poet was brought up by his parents with the tenderest care. Well did he repay their affection in after-years. The lonely boy began the race of life under heavy disadvantages. He was sickly and a cripple, and never knew what it was to feel the "vigorous joys of health." His genius, unlike that of Dryden, was developed at a very early period. He "lisped in numbers," and his ardour for knowledge, one of the best traits in his character, led him at an early age to "Scorn delights and live laborious days." Pope's father was a Roman Catholic, or, to use the term common at the time, a Papist, and this belief formed an impediment in those days not only to worldly advancement but to intellectual progress. Almost all the education the boy had which he did not gain for himself was imparted by a priest, and he said in after-years that it was "extremely loose and disconcerted." He was sent to school at Twyford for one year, but appears to have learnt nothing there. "Considering how very little I had," he observed, "when I came from school, I think I may be said to have taught myself Latin, as well as French and Greek." It appears that the precocious youth, when in his fifteenth year, went by himself to London to learn Italian and French. The adventure does not seem to have proved successful, and in a few months the boy-poet, who had already delighted his father by writing verses, returned to his country home and solitary studies. Pope had a half-sister many years his senior, but he was an only son, and enjoyed all the privileges of the position. They were never abused. His affection and reverence for his parents knew no change with the vicissitudes of years and the growth of fame and fortune. At sixteen years of age Pope was writing his "Pastorals," poems which are now unreadable, but which won no small praise when they were published some years later. They were the poet's first essays in a path which was destined to lead him to a dazzling pre-eminence in the literature of his century. In his resolution to gain a high place in the "Temple of Fame," Pope's courage never failed. There was but one field of ambition open to him, and in that he laboured with unflinching purpose. And yet there were times, before the goal was won, when he must have felt the vanity of the pursuit. Poetry, the best, and in scope the broadest of the arts, becomes degraded from its high position when it is simply made the vehicle of personal ambition. But to satisfy his over-eager craving after fame, Pope was led to write words and commit acts which even now cling to and deform his memory. The genius of the poet was not only developed carly, it was also early appreciated, and when, in 1711, he published his "Essay on Criticism," that famous piece was praised by Addison in the Spectator. From this time forth his career was one of unprecedented success. He won illustrious friends, and made them still more famous in his verse; and when his superior fortune or a venomous pen stirred up against him a host of enemies, Pope had his revenge by "hitching" them into rhyme also. This was, however, work for a later period. He did not begin his career as a satirist. The "Rape of the Lock," the most exquisite effort of his fancy, the "Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady," and the "Epistle of Eloise to Abelard," were published many years before the "Imitations of Horace" and the "Dunciad." He was still quite a young, but by no means an obscure, man, for by this time he had won the friendship of statesmen and men of letters, when he projected a translation |