The Rape of the Lock and Other Major Writings

by Alexander Pope

  To act consistent with himself an hour.

  Sir Job sailed forth, the evening bright and still,

  ‘No place on earth (he cried) like Greenwich Hill!’

  140 Up starts a palace: lo! th’ obedient base

  Slopes at its foot, the woods its sides embrace,

  The silver Thames reflects its marble face.

  Now let some whimsy, or that devil within

  Which guides all those who know not what they mean,

  But give the knight (or give his lady) spleen;

  ‘Away, away! take all your scaffolds down,

  For snug’s the word, my dear! we’ll live in town.’

  At am’rous Flavio is the stocking thrown?

  That very night he longs to lie alone.

  150 The fool whose wife elopes some thrice a quarter,

  For matrimonial solace dies a martyr.

  Did ever Proteus, Merlin, any witch,

  Transform themselves so strangely as the rich?

  ‘Well, but the poor’ – the poor have the same itch:

  They change their weekly barber, weekly news,

  Prefer a new japanner to their shoes,

  Discharge their garrets, move their beds, and run

  (They know not whither) in a chaise and one;

  They hire their sculler, and when once aboard,

  160 Grow sick, and damn the climate – like a lord.

  You laugh, half-beau, half-sloven if I stand,

  My wig all powder, and all snuff my band;

  You laugh, if coat and breeches strangely vary,

  White gloves, and linen worthy Lady Mary!

  But when no prelate’s lawn, with hair-shirt lined,

  Is half so incoherent as my mind,

  When (each opinion with the next at strife,

  One ebb and flow of follies all my life),

  I plant, root up; I build, and then confound;

  170 Turn round to square, and square again to round;

  You never change one muscle of your face,

  You think this madness but a common case;

  Nor once to Chanc’ry, nor to Hales apply,

  Yet hang your lip to see a seam awry!

  Careless how ill I with myself agree,

  Kind to my dress, my figure, not to me.

  Is this my guide, philosopher, and friend?

  This, he who loves me, and who ought to mend?

  Who ought to make me (what he can, or none),

  180 That man divine whom wisdom calls her own;

  Great without title, without fortune blessed;

  Rich ev’n when plundered, honoured while oppressed;

  Loved without youth, and followed without power,

  At home though exiled; free, though in the Tower:

  In short, that reas’ning, high, immortal thing,

  Just less than Jove, and much above a king;

  Nay, half in Heav’n – except (what’s mighty odd)

  A fit of vapours clouds this demigod.

  Epistle, II, i

  ADVERTISEMENT

  The reflections of Horace, and the judgements passed in his epistle to Augustus, seemed so seasonable to the present times that I could not help applying them to the use of my own country. The author thought them considerable enough to address them to his prince, whom he paints with all the great and good qualities of a monarch upon whom the Romans depended for the increase of an absolute empire. But to make the poem entirely English, I was willing to add one or two of those virtues which contribute to the happiness of a free people, and are more consistent with the welfare of our neighbours.

  This epistle will show the learned world to have fallen into two mistakes: one, that Augustus was a patron of poets in general; whereas he not only prohibited all but the best writers to name him, but recommended that care even to the civil magistrate, Admonebat praetores, ne paterentur nomen suum obsolefieri, etc., the other, that this piece was only a general discourse of poetry; whereas it was an apology for the poets, in order to render Augustus more their patron. Horace here pleads the cause of his contemporaries: first, against the taste of the town, whose humour it was to magnify the authors of the preceding age; secondly, against the court and nobility, who encouraged only the writers for the theatre; and lastly, against the emperor himself, who had conceived them of little use to the government. He shows (by a view of the progress of learning, and the change of taste among the Romans) that the introduction of the polite arts of Greece had given the writers of his time great advantages over their predecessors; that their morals were much improved, and the licence of those ancient poets restrained; that satire and comedy were become more just and useful; that whatever extravagancies were left on the stage were owing to the ill taste of the nobility; that poets, under due regulations, were in many respects useful to the state; and concludes, that it was upon them the emperor himself must depend for his fame with posterity.

  We may farther learn from this Epistle, that Horace made his court to this great prince by writing with a decent freedom toward him, with a just contempt of his low flatterers, and with a manly regard to his own character.

  To Augustus

  Ne rubeam, pingui donatus munere!

  While you, great patron of mankind! sustain

  The balanced world, and open all the main;

  Your country, chief, in arms abroad defend,

  At home with morals, arts, and laws amend;

  How shall the Muse, from such a monarch, steal

  An hour, and not defraud the public weal?

  Edward and Henry, now the boast of fame,

  And virtuous Alfred, a more sacred name,

  After a life of gen’rous toils endured,

  10 The Gaul subdued, or property secured,

  Ambition humbled, mighty cities stormed,

  Or laws established, and the world reformed;

  Closed their long glories with a sigh, to find

  Th’ unwilling gratitude of base mankind!

  All human virtue, to its latest breath,

  Finds envy never conquered but by death;

  The great Alcides, ev’ry labour past,

  Had still this monster to subdue at last.

  Sure fate of all, beneath whose rising ray

  20 Each star of meaner merit fades away!

  Oppressed we feel the beam directly beat;

  Those suns of glory please not till they set.

  To thee the world its present homage pays,

  The harvest early, but mature the praise:

  Great friend of Liberty! in kings a name

  Above all Greek, above all Roman fame:

  Whose word is truth, as sacred and revered

  As Heaven’s own oracles from altars heard.

  Wonder of kings! like whom, to mortal eyes,

  30 None e’er has risen, and none e’er shall rise.

  Just in one instance, be it yet confessed

  Your people, sir, are partial in the rest;

  Foes to all living worth except your own,

  And advocates for folly dead and gone.

  Authors, like coins, grow dear as they grow old;

  It is the rust we value, not the gold.

  Chaucer’s worst ribaldry is learned by rote,

  And beastly Skelton heads of houses quote.

  One likes no language but the Faery Queen;

  40 A Scot will fight for Christ’s Kirk o’ the Green;

  And each true Briton is to Ben so civil,

  He swears the Muses met him at the Devil.

  Though justly Greece her eldest sons admires,

  Why should not we be wiser than our sires?

  In ev’ry public virtue we excel,

  We build, we paint, we sing, we dance as well;

  And learnèd Athens to our art must stoop,

  Could she behold us tumbling through a hoop.

  If time improve our wit as well as wine,

  50 Say at what age a poet grows divine?

  Shall we, o
r shall we not, account him so,

  Who died, perhaps, a hundred years ago?

  End all dispute, and fix the year precise

  When British bards begin t’ immortalize?

  ‘Who lasts a century can have no flaw;

  I hold that wit a classic, good in law.’

  Suppose he wants a year, will you compound?

  And shall we deem him ancient, right and sound,

  Or damn to all eternity at once,

  60 At ninety-nine, a modern and a dunce?

  ‘We shall not quarrel for a year or two;

  By Courtesy of England, he may do.’

  Then, by the rule that made the horsetail bare,

  I pluck out year by year, as hair by hair,

  And melt down ancients like a heap of snow,

  While you, to measure merits, look in Stow,

  And estimating authors by the year

  Bestow a garland only on a bier.

  Shakespeare (whom you and every playhouse bill

  70 Style the divine, the matchless, what you will)

  For gain, not glory, winged his roving flight,

  And grew immortal in his own despite.

  Ben, old and poor, as little seemed to heed

  The life to come, in ev’ry poet’s creed.

  Who now reads Cowley? if he pleases yet

  His moral pleases, not his pointed wit;

  Forgot his epic, nay Pindaric art,

  But still I love the language of his heart.

  ‘Yet surely, surely these were famous men!

  80 What boy but hears the sayings of old Ben?

  In all debates where critics bear a part,

  Not one but nods, and talks of Jonson’s art,

  Of Shakespeare’s nature, and of Cowley’s wit;

  How Beaumont’s judgement checked what Fletcher writ;

  How Shadwell hasty, Wycherley was slow;

  But for the passions, Southerne sure, and Rowe.

  These, only these, support the crowded stage

  From eldest Heywood down to Cibber’s age.’

  All this may be; the people’s voice is odd,

  90 It is, and it is not, the voice of God.

  To Gammer Gurton if it give the bays,

  And yet deny the Careless Husband praise,

  Or say our fathers never broke a rule;

  Why then, I say, the public is a fool.

  But let them own that greater faults than we

  They had, and greater virtues, I’ll agree.

  Spenser himself affects the obsolete,

  And Sidney’s verse halts ill on Roman feet;

  Milton’s strong pinion now not Heav’n can bound,

  100 Now serpent-like, in prose he sweeps the ground;

  In quibbles, angel and archangel join,

  And God the Father turns a school-divine.

  Not that I’d lop the beauties from his book,

  Like slashing Bentley with his desp’rate hook;

  Or damn all Shakespeare, like th’ affected fool

  At court, who hates whate’er he read at school.

  But for the wits of either Charles’s days,

  The mob of gentlemen who wrote with ease,

  Sprat, Carew, Sedley, and a hundred more

  110 (Like twinkling stars the miscellanies o’er),

  One simile that solitary shines

  In the dry desert of a thousand lines,

  Or lengthened thought that gleams through many a page,

  Has sanctified whole poems for an age.

  I lose my patience, and I own it too,

  When works are censured, not as bad, but new;

  While if our elders break all reason’s laws,

  These fools demand not pardon, but applause.

  On Avon’s bank, where flow’rs eternal blow,

  120 If I but ask, if any weed can grow,

  One tragic sentence if I dare deride

  Which Betterton’s grave action dignified,

  Or well-mouthed Booth with emphasis proclaims

  (Though but perhaps a muster-roll of names),

  How will our fathers rise up in a rage

  And swear all shame is lost in George’s age!

  You’d think no fools disgraced the former reign,

  Did not some grave examples yet remain,

  Who scorn a lad should teach his father skill,

  130 And, having once been wrong, will be so still.

  He, who to seem more deep than you or I

  Extols old bards, or Merlin’s prophecy,

  Mistake him not; he envies, not admires,

  And to debase the sons, exalts the sires.

  Had ancient times conspired to disallow

  What then was new, what had been ancient now?

  Or what remained, so worthy to be read

  By learnèd critics, of the mighty dead?

  In days of ease, when now the weary sword

  140 Was sheathed, and luxury with Charles restored;

  In ev’ry taste of foreign courts improved,

  ‘All by the king’s example lived and loved.’

  Then peers grew proud in horsemanship t’ excel,

  Newmarket’s glory rose, as Britain’s fell;

  The soldier breathed the gallantries of France,

  And ev’ry flow’ry courtier writ romance.

  Then marble, soften’d into life, grew warm,

  And yielding metal flowed to human form:

  Lely on animated canvas stole

  150 The sleepy eye, that spoke the melting soul.

  No wonder then, when all was love and sport,

  The willing Muses were debauched at court;

  On each enervate string they taught the note

  To pant, or tremble through a eunuch’s throat.

  But Britain, changeful as a child at play,

  Now calls in princes, and now turns away.

  Now Whig, now Tory, what we loved we hate;

  Now all for pleasure, now for church and state;

  Now for prerogative, and now for laws;

  160 Effects unhappy! from a noble cause.

  Time was, a sober Englishman would knock

  His servants up, and rise by five o’clock,

  Instruct his family in ev’ry rule,

  And send his wife to church, his son to school.

  To worship like his fathers was his care;

  To teach their frugal virtues to his heir;

  To prove that luxury could never hold,

  And place on good security his gold.

  Now times are changed, and one poetic itch

  170 Has seized the court and City, poor and rich.

  Sons, sires, and grandsires, all will wear the bays;

  Our wives read Milton, and our daughters plays;

  To theatres and to rehearsals throng,

  And all our grace at table is a song.

  I, who so oft renounce the Muses, lie,

  Not —’s self e’er tells more fibs than I;

  When sick of Muse, our follies we deplore,

  And promise our best friends to rhyme no more;

  We wake next morning in a raging fit

  180 And call for pen and ink to show our wit.

  He served a ’prenticeship who sets up shop;

  Ward tried on puppies, and the poor, his drop;

  Ev’n Radcliffe’s doctors travel first to France,

  Nor dare to practise till they’ve learned to dance;

  Who builds a bridge that never drove a pile?

  (Should Ripley venture, all the world would smile).

  But those who cannot write, and those who can,

  All rhyme, and scrawl, and scribble, to a man.

  Yet, sir, reflect; the mischief is not great;

  190 These madmen never hurt the church or state:

  Sometimes the folly benefits mankind,

  And rarely av’rice taints the tuneful mind.

  Allow him but his plaything of a pen,

  He ne�
�er rebels, or plots, like other men:

  Flight of cashiers, or mobs, he’ll never mind,

  And knows no losses while the Muse is kind.

  To cheat a friend, or ward, he leaves to Peter,

  The good man heaps up nothing but mere metre,

  Enjoys his garden and his book in quiet;

  200 And then – a perfect hermit in his diet.

  Of little use the man, you may suppose,

  Who says in verse what others say in prose;

  Yet let me show a poet’s of some weight,

  And (though no soldier) useful to the state.

  What will a child learn sooner than a song?

  What better teach a foreigner the tongue?

  What’s long or short, each accent where to place,

  And speak in public with some sort of grace?

  I scarce can think him such a worthless thing,

  210 Unless he praise some monster of a king;

  Or virtue or religion turn to sport,

  To please a lewd or unbelieving court.

  Unhappy Dryden! – In all Charles’s days

  Roscommon only boasts unspotted bays;

  And in our own (excuse some courtly stains)

  No whiter page than Addison remains.

  He from the taste obscene reclaims our youth,

  And sets the passions on the side of truth,

  Forms the soft bosom with the gentlest art,

  220 And pours each human virtue in the heart.

  Let Ireland tell how wit upheld her cause,

  Her trade supported, and supplied her laws;

  And leave on Swift this grateful verse engraved,

  ‘The rights a court attacked, a poet saved.’

  Behold the hand that wrought a nation’s cure

  Stretched to relieve the idiot and the poor,

  Proud vice to brand, or injured worth adorn,

  And stretch the ray to ages yet unborn.

  Not but there are, who merit other palms;

  230 Hopkins and Sternhold glad the heart with psalms;

  The boys and girls whom charity maintains

  Implore your help in these pathetic strains;

  How could devotion touch the country pews

  Unless the gods bestowed a proper muse?

  Verse cheers their leisure, verse assists their work,

  Verse prays for peace, or sings down pope and Turk.

  The silenced preacher yields to potent strain,