The Rape of the Lock and Other Major Writings

by Alexander Pope

  FROM PERI BATHOUS, OR: OF THE ART OF SINKING IN POETRY

  CHAPTER III

  The Necessity of the Bathos, Physically Considered

  Furthermore, it were great cruelty and injustice if all such authors as cannot write in the other way were prohibited from writing at all. Against this, I draw an argument from what seems to me an undoubted physical maxim, that poetry is a natural or morbid secretion1 from the brain. As I would not suddenly stop a cold in the head or dry up my neighbour’s issue,2 I would as little hinder him from necessary writing. It may be affirmed with great truth that there is hardly any human creature past childhood but at one time or other has had some poetical evacuation,3 and no question was much the better for it in his health; so true is the saying, nascimur poetae.4 Therefore is the desire of writing properly termed pruritus,5 the titillation of the generative faculty of the brain; and the person is said to conceive.6 Now, such as conceive must bring forth. I have known a man thoughtful, melancholy, and raving for divers days, but forthwith grow wonderfully easy, lightsome, and cheerful upon a discharge of the peccant humour7 in exceeding purulent metre.8 Nor can I question but abundance of untimely deaths are occasioned by want of this laudable vent of unruly passions, yea, perhaps, in poor wretches (which is very lamentable) for mere want of pen, ink, and paper! From hence it follows that a suppression of the very worst poetry is of dangerous consequence to the State. We find by experience that the same humours which vent themselves in summer in ballads and sonnets are condensed by the winter’s cold into pamphlets and speeches for and against the Ministry.9 Nay, I know not but many times a piece of poetry may be the most innocent composition of a minister himself.

  It is therefore manifest that Mediocrity ought to be allowed, yea indulged, to the good subjects of England. Nor can I conceive how the world has swallowed the contrary as a maxim upon the single authority of that Horace.10 Why should the Golden Mean and quintessence of all virtues be deemed so offensive only in this art? Or coolness or Mediocrity be so amiable a quality in a man and so detestable in a poet?

  However, far be it from me to compare these writers with those great spirits who are born with a vivacité de pesanteur,11 or (as an English author calls it) an alacrity of sinking,12 and who by strength of Nature alone can excel. All I mean is to evince the necessity of rules to these lesser geniuses, as well as the usefulness of them to the greater.

  CHAPTER VIII

  Of the Profound: Consisting in the Circumstances; and of Amplification and Periphrase in General

  What in a great measure distinguishes other writers from ours is their choosing and separating such circumstances in a description as illustrate or elevate the subject.

  The circumstances which are most natural are obvious, therefore not astonishing or peculiar. But those that are farfetched, or unexpected, or hardly compatible, will surprise prodigiously. These therefore we must principally hunt out; but above all preserve a laudable prolixity, presenting the whole and every side at once of the image to view. For choice and distinction are not only a curb to the spirit and limit the descriptive faculty, but also lessen the book,13 which is frequently of the worst consequence of all to our author.

  When Job says in short, ‘He washed his feet in butter’,14 (a circumstance some poets would have softened or passed over), hear how it is spread out by the Great Genius:

  With teats distended with their milky store,

  Such num’rous lowing herds, before my door,

  Their painful burden to unload did meet,

  That we with butter might have washed our feet.15

  How cautious! and particular! He had (says our author) so many herds, which herds thrived so well, and thriving so well, gave so much milk, and that milk produced so much butter, that if he did not, he might have washed his feet in it.

  The ensuing description of Hell is no less remarkable in the circumstances:

  In flaming heaps the raging ocean rolls,

  Whose livid waves involve despairing souls;

  The liquid burnings dreadful colours show,

  Some deeply red, and others faintly blue.16

  Could the most minute Dutch painter have been more exact?

  How inimitably circumstantial is this also of a war-horse!

  His eye-balls burn, he wounds the smoking plain,

  And knots of scarlet ribbon deck his mane.17

  Of certain cudgel-players:

  They brandish high in air their threat’ning staves,

  Their hands a woven guard of osier saves,

  In which they fix their hazel weapon’s end.18

  Who would not think the poet had passed his whole life at wakes in such laudable diversions? He even teaches us how to hold and to make a cudgel!

  Periphrase19 is another great aid to prolixity, being a diffused circumlocutory manner of expressing a known idea, which should be so mysteriously couched as to give the reader the pleasure of guessing what it is that the author can possibly mean, and a surprise when he finds it. The poet I last mentioned is incomparable in this figure:

  A waving sea of heads was round me spread,

  And still fresh streams the gazing deluge fed.20

  Here is a waving sea of heads, which by a fresh stream of heads grows to be a gazing deluge of heads. You come at last to find it means a ‘great crowd’ …

  CHAPTER XI

  The Figures Continued: of the Magnifying, and Diminishing Figures

  A genuine writer of the Profound will take care never to magnify an object without clouding it at the same time. His thought will appear in a true mist, and very unlike what is in Nature. It must always be remembered that darkness is an essential quality of the Profound, or if there chance to be a glimmering, it must be as Milton expresses it, ‘No light, but rather darkness visible’.21 The chief figure of this sort is

  The Hyperbole or Impossible

  For instance, of a lion:

  He roared so loud, and looked so wondrous grim,

  His very shadow durst not follow him.22

  Of a lady at dinner:

  The silver whiteness that adorns thy neck,

  Sullies the plate, and makes the napkin black.23

  Of the same:

  The obscureness of her birth

  Cannot eclipse the lustre of her eyes,

  Which make her all one light.24

  Of a bull-baiting:

  Up to the stars the sprawling mastiffs fly,

  And add new monsters to the frighted sky.25

  Of a scene of misery:

  Behold a scene of misery and woe!

  Here Argus soon might weep himself quite blind,

  Ev’n though he had Briareus’ hundred hands

  To wipe those hundred eyes.26

  And that modest request of two absent lovers:

  Ye gods! annihilate but space and time,

  And make two lovers happy.27

  The periphrasis, which the moderns call the circumbendibus,28 whereof we have given examples in the ninth chapter and shall again in the twelfth.

  To the same class of the Magnifying may be referred the following, which are so excellently modern that we have yet no name for them. In describing a country prospect:29

  I’d call them mountains, but can’t call them so,

  For fear to wrong them with a name too low;

  While the fair vales beneath so humbly lie,

  That even humble seems a term too high.30

  The third class remains, of the Diminishing figures: and first, the anticlimax, where the second line drops quite short of the first, than which nothing creates greater surprise.

  On the extent of the British arms:

  Under the tropics is our language spoke,

  And part of Flanders hath received our yoke.31

  On a warrior:

  And thou Dalhoussy the Great God of War,

  Lieutenant Colonel to the Earl of Mar.32

  …

  CHAPTER XII

  Of Expression

  …<
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  The Finical,33

  which consists of the most curious, affected, mincing metaphors; as this, of a brook dried by the sun:

  Won by the summer’s importuning ray,

  Th’ eloping stream did from her channel stray,

  And with enticing sunbeams stole away.34

  Of an easy death:

  When watchful death shall on his harvest look

  And see thee ripe with age, invite the hook;

  He’ll gently cut thy bending stalk, and thee

  Lay kindly in the grave, his granary.35

  Of trees in a storm:

  Oaks with extended arms the winds defy,

  The tempest sees their strength, and sighs, and passes by.36

  Of water simmering over the fire:

  The sparkling flames raise water to a smile,

  Yet the pleased liquor pines, and lessens all the while.37

  Lastly I shall place THE CUMBROUS, which moves heavily under a load of metaphors and draws after it a long train of words. And the BUSKIN,38 or Stately, frequently and with great felicity mixed with the former. For as the first is the proper engine39 to depress what is high, so is the second to raise what is base and low to a ridiculous visibility. When both these can be done at once, then is the Bathos in perfection; as when a man is set with his head downward and his breech40 upright, his degradation is complete: one end of him is as high as ever, only that end is the wrong one. Will not every true lover of the Profound be delighted to behold the most vulgar and low actions of life exalted in this manner?

  Who knocks at the door?

  For whom thus rudely pleads my loud-tongued gate,

  That he may enter?41

  See who is there.

  Advance the fringèd curtains of thy eyes,

  And tell me who comes yonder.42

  Shut the door.

  The wooden guardian of our privacy

  Quick on its axle turn.

  Bring my clothes.

  Bring me what Nature, tailor to the bear,

  To man himself denied: she gave me cold,

  But would not give me clothes.

  Light the fire.

  Bring forth some remnant of Promethean theft,

  Quick to expand th’ inclement air congealed

  By Boreas’s rude breath.

  Snuff the candle.

  Yon luminary amputation needs,

  Thus shall you save its half-extinguished life.

  Open the letter.

  Wax! render up thy trust.43

  Uncork the bottle and chip the bread.

  Apply thine engine to the spongy door,

  Set Bacchus from his glassy prison free,

  And strip white Ceres44 of her nut-brown coat.

  CHAPTER XV

  A Receipt 45 to Make an Epic Poem

  An epic poem, the critics agree, is the greatest work human nature is capable of. They have already laid down many mechanical rules for compositions of this sort, but at the same time they cut off almost all undertakers46 from the possibility of ever performing them; for the first qualification they unanimously require in a poet is a genius. I shall here endeavour (for the benefit of my countrymen) to make it manifest that epic poems may be made without a genius, nay without learning or much reading. This must necessarily be of great use to all those who confess they never read, and of whom the world is convinced they never learn. What Molière observes of making a dinner,47 that any man can do it with money, and if a professed cook cannot do it without, he has his art for nothing; the same may be said of making a poem. ’Tis easily brought about by him that has a genius, but the skill lies in doing it without one. In pursuance of this end, I shall present the reader with a plain and certain recipe by which any author in the Bathos may be qualified for this grand performance.

  For the Fable48

  Take out of any old poem, history-book, romance, or legend (for instance, Geoffrey of Monmouth49 or Don Belianis of Greece)50 those parts of story which afford most scope for long descriptions. Put these pieces together, and throw all the adventures you fancy into one tale. Then take a hero, whom you may choose for the sound of his name, and put him into the midst of these adventures. There let him work, for twelve books, at the end of which you may take him out, ready prepared to conquer or to marry, it being necessary that the conclusion of an epic poem be fortunate.

  To make an Episode

  Take any remaining adventure of your former collection in which you could no way involve your hero, or any unfortunate accident that was too good to be thrown away, and it will be of use applied to any other person, who may be lost and evaporate in the course of the work without the least damage to the composition.

  For the Moral and Allegory

  These you may extract out of the Fable afterwards, at your leisure. Be sure you strain them sufficiently.

  For the Manners

  For those of the hero, take all the best qualities you can find in the most celebrated heroes of antiquity; if they will not be reduced to a consistency, lay ’em all on a heap upon him. But be sure they are qualities which your Patron would be thought to have; and, to prevent any mistake which the world may be subject to, select from the alphabet those capital letters that compose his name and set them at the head of a dedication before your poem. However, do not absolutely observe the exact quantity of these virtues, it not being determined whether or no it be necessary for the hero of a poem to be an honest man.51 For the under-characters, gather them from Homer and Virgil, and change the names as occasion serves.

  For the Machines52

  Take of deities, male and female, as many as you can use. Separate them into two equal parts, and keep Jupiter in the middle. Let Juno put him in a ferment, and Venus mollify him. Remember on all occasions to make use of volatile Mercury.53 If you have need of devils, draw them out of Milton’s Paradise, and extract your spirits from Tasso.54 The use of these machines is evident; for since no epic poem can possibly subsist without them, the wisest way is to reserve them for your greatest necessities. When you cannot extricate your hero by any human means, or yourself by your own wit, seek relief from heaven, and the gods will do your business very readily. This is according to the direct prescription of Horace in his Art of Poetry:

  Nec deus intersit, nisi dignus vindice nodus inciderit.55

  That is to say, ‘A poet should never call upon the gods for their assistance, but when he is in great perplexity.’

  For the Descriptions

  For a Tempest: take Eurus, Zephyr, Auster, and Boreas,56 and cast them together in one verse. Add to these of rain, lightning and of thunder (the loudest you can) quantum sufficit.57 Mix your clouds and billows well together till they foam, and thicken your description here and there with a quicksand. Brew your tempest well in your head before you set it a-blowing.

  For a Battle: pick a large quantity of images and descriptions from Homer’s Iliad, with a spice or two of Virgil, and if there remain any overplus, you may lay them by for a Skirmish. Season it well with similes, and it will make an excellent battle.

  For a Burning Town: if such a description be necessary (because it is certain there is one in Virgil), old Troy is ready burnt to your hands. But if you fear that would be thought borrowed, a chapter or two of the Theory of the Conflagration,58 well circumstanced and done into verse, will be a good succedaneum.59

  As for similes and metaphors, they may be found all over the creation; the most ignorant may gather them, but the danger is in applying them. For this advise with your Bookseller.60

  SELECTED LETTERS

  To Lady Mary Wortley Montagu,1 3 February 1717

  Madam – I wish I could write any thing to divert you, but it is impossible in the unquiet state I am put into by your letter. It has grievously afflicted me, without affectation; and I think you would hardly have writ it in so strong terms, had you known to what a degree I feel the loss of those I value (it is only decency that hinders me from saying, of her I value). From this instant you are doubl
y dead to me, and all the vexation and concern I endured at your parting from England was nothing to what I suffer the moment I hear you have left Vienna. Till now I had some small hopes in God and in Fortune; I waited for accidents,2 and had at least the faint comfort of a wish, when I thought of you. I am now – I can’t tell what – I won’t tell what, for it would grieve you – This letter is a piece of madness, that throws me after you in a distracted manner. I don’t know which way to write, which way to send it, or if it will ever reach your hands. If it does, what can you infer from it, but what I am half afraid, and half willing, you should know: how very much I was yours, how unfortunately well I knew you, and with what a miserable constancy I shall ever remember you? …