Alexander Pope - Delphi Poets Series

by Alexander Pope

  John Philips (1676-1708).

  Ambrose Philips must not be confounded with his namesake John, the author of a clever burlesque of Milton, called The Splendid Shilling (1705); of Blenheim (1705), a poem which he was urged to write by the Tories in opposition to Addison’s Campaign; and of a poem upon Cider (1706), in ‘Miltonian verse,’ which seems to have afforded several suggestions to Pope in his Windsor Forest. It is said to display a considerable knowledge of the subject, and in that its principal merit consists. From The Splendid Shilling a brief extract may be given:

  ‘So pass my days. But when nocturnal shades This world envelop, and th’ inclement air Persuades men to repel benumbing frosts With pleasant wines, and crackling blaze of wood; Me, lonely sitting, nor the glimmering light Of make-weight candle, nor the joyous talk Of loving friend delights; distressed, forlorn, Amidst the horrors of the tedious night, Darkling I sigh, and feed with dismal thoughts My anxious mind; or sometimes mournful verse Indite, and sing of groves and myrtle shades, Or desperate lady near a purling stream, Or lover pendent on a willow tree. Meanwhile I labour with eternal drought And restless wish, and rave; my parched throat Finds no relief, nor heavy eyes repose. But if a slumber haply does invade My weary limbs, my fancy still awake, Thoughtful of drink, and eager, in a dream Tipples imaginary pots of ale In vain; awake I find the settled thirst Still gnawing, and the pleasant phantom curse.’

  ‘Philips,’ says the poet Campbell, ‘had the merit of studying and admiring Milton, but he never could imitate him without ludicrous effect, either in jest or earnest. His Splendid Shilling is the earliest and one of the best of our parodies; but Blenheim is as completely a burlesque upon Milton as The Splendid Shilling, though it was written and read with gravity, ... yet such are the fluctuations of taste that contemporary criticism bowed with solemn admiration over his Miltonic cadences.’

  Nicholas Rowe (1673-1718).

  Nicholas Rowe had the honour, if it was one in those days, of being made Laureate on the accession of George I. His odes, epistles, and songs are without merit, but he gained reputation as the translator of Lucan’s Pharsalia, of which Sir Arthur Gorges had produced a version in 1614, and his plays entitle him to a place, though not a high one, in our dramatic literature.

  Rowe edited an edition of Shakespeare, and should have known his author, yet in a prologue he declares that he could not draw women — an amazing assertion echoed by Collins, who praises Fletcher for his knowledge of the ‘female mind,’ and adds that ‘stronger Shakespeare felt for man alone.’

  The chronological list of Rowe’s dramas runs as follows: The Ambitious Step-mother (1700); Tamerlane (1702); The Fair Penitent (1703); Ulysses (1705); The Royal Convert (1707); the Tragedy of Jane Shore (1714); and the Tragedy of Lady Jane Grey (1715). Measured by his contemporary dramatists he is a distinguished playwright. His characters do not live, but he could invent effective scenes, though in some cases the poet’s taste may be questioned.

  For many years Tamerlane was acted at Drury Lane on the anniversary of King William’s landing in England, and under the names of Tamerlane and Bajazet the king is belauded at the expense of Louis XIV. The Fair Penitent, a piece even more successful upon the stage, will still please the reader, though he may question the high eulogium of Johnson, that “scarcely any work of any poet is at once so interesting by the fable, and so delightful by the language.” Rowe has not the tragic power which can express passion without rant, and pathos without extravagance. In The Fair Penitent Calista gives utterance to her feelings by piling up expletives. Thus, when her husband attacks the lover who has ruined her, she exclaims, ‘Destruction! fury! sorrow! shame! and death!’ and, on another occasion, she cries out, ‘Madness! confusion!’ words which give a sense of the ludicrous rather than of the tragic; and so also does Calista’s last utterance when, addressing Altamont, she says:

  ‘Had I but early known Thy wondrous worth, thou excellent young man We had been happier both — now ‘tis too late!’

  Rowe may be regarded as the principal representative of tragedy in the ‘age of Pope,’ but his respectable work shows a fatal degeneration from the ‘gorgeous tragedy’ of the Elizabethans.

  Aaron Hill (1684-1749).

  Aaron Hill, unlike Rowe, was not distinguished as a dramatist, and succeeded only in two or three adaptations from the French. His claims as a poet are also insignificant. He was born in London in 1684, with expectations that were not destined to be realized, but Fortune was not unkind to him. His uncle, Lord Paget, Ambassador at Constantinople, gave the youth a warm welcome, supplied him with a tutor, and sent him to travel in the East. On Lord Paget’s return to England, Hill accompanied him, and together they are said to have visited a great part of Europe. Some time later Hill went abroad again, and was absent two or three years. For awhile — it could not have been long — he was secretary to the Earl of Peterborough, and at the age of twenty-six, his good star being still in the ascendant, he married a young lady ‘of great merit and beauty, with whom he had a very handsome fortune.’ Hill was then appointed manager of Drury Lane, and he wrote a number of plays, the very names of which are now forgotten. Few men indeed so well known in his own day have sunk into such insignificance in ours. He wrote eight books of a long and unfinished epic called Gideon, which I suppose no one in the present century has had the hardihood to read; like Young he wrote a poem on The Judgment Day, a theme attempted also, shortly before his death, by John Philips, and that, after his kind, he produced a Pindaric ode goes without saying. A long poem called The Northern Star, a panegyric on Peter the Great, is said to have passed through several editions. The poem does not prove Hill to be a poet, but it shows his command of the heroic couplet. The style of the poem, which is an indiscriminate panegyric, may be judged from the following lines:

  ‘Transcendent prince! how happy must thou be! What can’st thou look upon unblessed by thee? What inward peace must that calm bosom know, Whence conscious virtue does so strongly flow!

  * * * * *

  Such are the kings who make God’s image shine, Nor blush to dare assert their right divine! No earth-born bias warps their climbing will, No pride their power, no avarice whets their skill. They poise each hope which bids the wise obey, And shed broad blessings from their widening sway; To raise the afflicted, stretch the healing hand, Drive crushed oppression from each rescued land, Bold in alternate right, or sheath or draw The sword of conquest, or the sword of law; Spare what resists not, what opposes bend, And govern cool, what they with warmth defend.’

  Hill has the merit of having turned the tables upon Pope, who had put him into the treatise on the Bathos, and then into the Dunciad, where, however, the lines have more of compliment than censure, since he is made to mount ‘far off among the swans of Thames.’ Irritated by a note in the Dunciad, Hill replied in a long poem entitled The Progress of Wit, a Caveat, which opens with the following pointed lines:

  ‘Tuneful Alexis, on the Thames’ fair side, The ladies’ plaything, and the Muses’ pride; With merit popular, with wit polite, Easy though vain, and elegant though light; Desiring, and deserving others’ praise, Poorly accepts a fame he ne’er repays; Unborn to cherish, sneakingly approves, And wants the soul to spread the worth he loves.’

  In a letter to Hill Pope complained of these lines, and had the hypocrisy to say that he never thought any great matters of his poetical capacity, but prided himself on the superiority of his moral life. Hill returned a masterly and incisive reproof to this ridiculous statement, in the course of which he says:

  ‘I am sorry to hear you say you never thought any great matters of your poetry. It is in my opinion the characteristic you are to hope your distinction from. To be honest is the duty of every plain man. Nor, since the soul of poetry is sentiment, can a great poet want morality. But your honesty you possess in common with a million who will never be remembered; whereas your poetry is a peculiar, that will make it impossible that you should be forgotten.’

  He adds that
if Pope had not been in the spleen when he wrote, he would have remembered that humility is a moral virtue; and how, asks the writer, can you know that your moral life is above that of most of the wits ‘since you tell me in the same letter that many of their names were unknown to you?’

  Aaron Hill, though he could write a sensible letter, was not a wise man. He was ‘everything by turns and nothing long.’ Poetry was but one of his accomplishments, and we are told that he cultivated it ‘as a relaxation from the study of history, criticism, geography, physic, commerce, agriculture, war, law, chemistry, and natural philosophy, to which he devoted the greatest part of his time.’

  As a poet Hill has the facility in composition exhibited by so many of his contemporaries, and he has occasionally a pretty turn of fancy. His last labour was the successful adaptation of Voltaire’s Merope to the English stage (1749); sixteen years before he had adapted Zara with equal success.

  Thomas Parnell (1679-1718).

  Among the minor poets of the period an honourable place must be given to Parnell, who possessed the soul of a poet, but gave limited expression to it, for it was only during the later years of a short life that he discovered where his genius lay. The friend of Pope, Arbuthnot, and Swift, his biography has been written by Johnson, and more discursively by his countryman Goldsmith.

  Thomas Parnell was born in Dublin, 1679, entered Trinity College at the early age of thirteen, and in 1700 obtained the degree of Master of Arts. Having taken orders he gained preferment in the Church, became, in 1706, Archdeacon of Clogher, and through the recommendation of Swift obtained also a good living. Parnell was fond of society, and was accustomed as often as possible to join the wits in London. He was a member of the Scriblerus Club, wrote for the Spectator, preached eloquent sermons, and had the ambition of a poet. But the loss of his wife preyed upon his mind, and he is said, though I believe chiefly on Pope’s authority, to have given way to intemperance. He died suddenly at Chester at the age of thirty-nine in 1718.

  Parnell was one of the poets whose fortunes Swift did his best to promote. Writing in 1712, he says, ‘I gave Lord Bolingbroke a poem of Parnell’s. I made Parnell insert some compliments in it to his lordship. He is extremely pleased with it, and read some parts of it to-day to Lord Treasurer, who liked it as much. And indeed he outdoes all our poets here a bar’s length.’ And a month later he writes, ‘Lord Bolingbroke likes Parnell mightily, and it is pleasant to see that one who hardly passed for anything in Ireland, makes his way here with a little friendly forwarding.’

  The Hermit, the Hymn to Contentment, an Allegory on Man, and a Night Piece on Death, give Parnell his title to a place among the poets. The Rise of Woman, and Health, an Eclogue, have also much merit, and were praised by Pope (but this was to their author) as ‘two of the most beautiful things he ever read.’ The story of The Hermit, written originally in Spanish, is given in Howell’s Letters (1645-1655), and is admirably told by Parnell, but much that he wrote, including a series of long poems on Scripture characters, is poetically worthless. His poems, published five years after his death, were edited by Pope, who wisely suppressed some pieces unworthy of the poet. Then, as now, literary scavengers were at work. In 1758 the suppressed poems were published, and called forth the comment from Gray, ‘Parnell is the dunghill of Irish Grub Street.’ To Parnell Pope was indebted for the Essay on Homer prefixed to the translation, with which he does not seem to have been well pleased. He complained of the stiffness of the style, and said it had cost him more pains in the correcting than the writing of it would have done.

  If Parnell’s prose has the defect of stiffness, his lines glide with a smoothness that must have satisfied the ear of Pope. The higher harmonies of verse were unknown to him, but ease is not without a charm, and in illustration of Parnell’s gift the final lines of A Night Piece on Death shall be quoted:

  ‘When men my scythe and darts supply, How great a king of fears am I! They view me like the last of things, They make and then they draw my stings. Fools! if you less provoked your fears, No more my spectre form appears. Death’s but a path that must be trod, If man would ever pass to God; A port of calms, a state to ease From the rough rage of swelling seas. Why then thy flowing sable stoles, Deep pendent cypress, mourning poles, Loose scarfs to fall athwart thy weeds, Long palls, drawn hearses, covered steeds, And plumes of black that as they tread, Nod o’er the scutcheons of the dead? Nor can the parted body know, Nor wants the soul these forms of woe; As men who long in prison dwell, With lamps that glimmer round the cell, Whene’er their suffering years are run, Spring forth to greet the glittering sun; Such joy, though far transcending sense, Have pious souls at parting hence. On earth and in the body placed, A few and evil years they waste; But when their chains are cast aside, See the glad scene unfolding wide, Clap the glad wing, and tower away, And mingle with the blaze of day.’

  Thomas Tickell (1686-1740).

  Tickell wished to be remembered as the friend of Addison, and with Addison his name is indissolubly associated. The poem dedicated to the essayist’s memory is perhaps over-praised by Macaulay when he says that it would do honour to the greatest name in our literature, but it proved incontestibly that Tickell, as a poet, was superior to the master whom he so loved and honoured. His reputation hangs upon this elegy, which Fox pronounced perfect. The Prospect of Peace, which passed through several editions, had at one time a considerable reputation, not assuredly for its poetry, but because it appealed to the spirit of the time The style of the poem may be judged from these lines: —

  ‘Accept, great Anne, the tears their memory draws, Who nobly perished in their sovereign’s cause; For thou in pity bidd’st the war give o’er, Mourn’st thy slain heroes, nor wilt venture more. Vast price of blood on each victorious day! (But Europe’s freedom doth that price repay.) Lamented triumphs! when one breath must tell That Marlborough conquered and that Dormer fell.’

  His Colin and Lucy called forth high praise from Goldsmith as one of the best ballads in our language, and Gray terms it the prettiest ballad in the world. Three stanzas from this once famous poem shall be quoted: —

  ‘“I hear a voice you cannot hear, Which says I must not stay; I see a hand you cannot see, Which beckons me away. By a false heart and broken vows, In early youth I die; Was I to blame because his bride Was thrice as rich as I?

  ‘“Ah, Colin, give not her thy vows, Vows due to me alone; Nor thou, fond maid, receive his kiss, Nor think him all thy own. To-morrow in the church to wed, Impatient, both prepare! But know, fond maid, and know, false man, That Lucy will be there!

  ‘“Then bear my corse, my comrades, bear, This bridegroom blithe to meet, He in his wedding trim so gay, I in my winding-sheet.” She spoke, she died; her corse was borne The bridegroom blithe to meet, He in his wedding trim so gay, She in her winding-sheet.’

  There is some fancy but no imagination in the machinery of Tickell’s long poem on Kensington Gardens, a title which recalls Matthew Arnold’s exquisite stanzas. But the pathetic beauty of Arnold’s lines belongs to a world of poetry wholly unlike that in which even the best of the Queen Anne poets lived and moved.

  Tickell’s translation of the first book of the Iliad led to the quarrel already mentioned in the account of Pope. He wrote, also, a rather lengthy poem on Oxford, in which there is some absurd criticism of insignificant poetasters, and, as a matter of course, an extravagant eulogium of Addison.

  The few facts recorded of Tickell’s life may be summed up in a paragraph. He was born in 1686 at Bridekirk, in Cumberland, and entered Queen’s College, Oxford, in 1701. In 1708 he obtained his M.A. degree, and two years later was chosen Fellow. For sixteen years Tickell held his fellowship, but resigned it on his marriage in 1726. In a poem addressed to the lady before marriage, he asks whether

  ‘By thousands sought, Clotilda, canst thou free Thy crowd of captives and descend to me?’

  Praise which in those days would be regarded as fulsome secured the friendship and patronage of Addison, who e
mployed him in public affairs, and when he became Secretary of State made Tickell Under-Secretary. To him Addison left the charge of editing his works, which were published by subscription, and appeared in four quarto volumes in 1721. In 1725 he was made secretary to the Lord Justices of Ireland, ‘a place of great honour,’ which he held until his death in 1740. The praise of Wordsworth, a poet always chary of expressing approbation, has been bestowed upon Tickell. ‘I think him,’ he said, ‘one of the very best writers of occasional verses.’

  William Somerville (1692-1742).

  Tickell had written some lines on hunting, which he published as a fragment. His contemporary Somerville, selecting the same subject, wrote The Chase (1735), a poem in blank verse. He was born at Edston, in Warwickshire, and was said, Dr. Johnson writes, ‘to be of the first family in his county.’ He was educated at Winchester and Oxford, and had the tastes of a scholar as well as of a country gentleman, which, among other accomplishments, included that of hard drinking. We know little about him, and what we do know is deplorable, for his friend Shenstone writes that he was plagued and threatened by low wretches, and ‘forced to drink himself into pains of the body in order to get rid of the pains of the mind.’ He died in 1742, the owner of a good estate, which, owing to a contempt for economy, he was never able to enjoy. ‘I loved him for nothing so much,’ said Shenstone, ‘as for his flocci-nauci-nihili-pili-fication of money.’

  In The Chase Somerville had the advantage of knowing his subject, but knowledge is not poetry, and the interest of the poem is not due to its poetical qualities. He deserves some credit for his skill in handling a variety of metres as well as blank verse, in which his principal poem is written. In an address To Mr. Addison, the couplet,

  ‘When panting Virtue her last efforts made, You brought your Clio to the virgin’s aid,’

  is praised by Johnson as one of those happy strokes which are seldom attained. In the same poem Shakespeare and Addison are brought together in a way that is far from happy: