Pope, Alexander (1688–1744), was the son of a Roman Catholic linen- draper of London. His health was ruined and his growth stunted by a severe illness at the age of 12. He showed his precocious metrical skill in his ‘Pastorals’ (1709) written, according to himself, when he was 16. He became intimate with
Wycherley, who introduced him to London life. His
Essay on Criticism (1711) made him known to
Addison's circle, and his ‘Messiah’ was published in the
Spectator in 1712.
The Rape of the Lock appeared in
Lintot's Miscellanies in the same year and was republished, enlarged, in 1714.
Windsor Forest (1713) appealed to the Tories by its references to the Peace of Utrecht. He drifted away from Addison's ‘little senate’ and became a member of the
Scriblerus Club. His translation in heroic couplets of Homer's
Iliad (1715–20) is more
Augustan than Homeric in spirit and diction. It was supplemented in 1725–6 by a translation of the
Odyssey, in which he was assisted by William Broome and Elijah Fenton. The two translations brought him financial independence.
In 1717 had appeared a collection of his works containing two poems dealing with the passion of love. They are ‘Verses to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady’, and ‘
Eloisa to Abelard’. About this time he became strongly attached to Martha
Blount, with whom his friendship continued throughout his life, and to Lady M. W.
Montagu, whom in later years he assailed with bitterness.
Pope assisted
Gay in writing the comedy
Three Hours after Marriage (1717). In 1723, Pope's portrait of
Atticus, a satire on Addison, appeared. In the
Miscellanies (1727, by Pope,
Swift,
Arbuthnot, and Gay) Pope published his prose treatise
Peri Bathous, or The Art of Sinking in Poetry, ridiculing among others Ambrose
Philips,
Theobald, and J.
Dennis. In 1725 Pope published an edition of Shakespeare, the errors in which were pointed out in a pamphlet by Theobald. This led to Pope's selection of Theobald as hero of his
Dunciad, a satire on Dullness. An additional book,
The New Dunciad, was published in 1742. Influenced in part by the philosophy of his friend
Boling-broke, Pope published a series of moral and philosophical poems,
An Essay on Man (1733–4), consisting of four Epistles; and
Moral Essays (1731–5). In 1733 Pope published the first of his miscellaneous satires,
Imitations of Horace. In it he defends himself against the charge of Malignity, and professes to be inspired only by love of virtue. He inserts, however, a gross attack on Lady Mary Wortley Montagu as ‘Sappho’.
An Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot (1735), the prologue to the above Satires, is one of Pope's most brilliant pieces of irony and invective, mingled with autobiography. It contains the famous portraits of Addison and Lord
Hervey, and lashes at his minor critics, Dennis, Cibber,
Curll, Theobald, etc.
He was partly occupied during his later years with the publication of his earlier correspondence, which he edited and amended in such a manner as to misrepresent the literary history of the time. He also employed discreditable artifices to make it appear that it was published against his wish. Thus he procured the publication by Curll of his ‘Literary Correspondence’ in 1735, and then endeavoured to disavow him.
With the growth of
Romanticism Pope's poetry was increasingly seen as artificial. It was not until
Leavis and
Empson that a serious attempt was made to rediscover Pope's richness, variety, and complexity.
