The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems by Alexander Pope

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Pope gradually persuaded himself that all the works of these years, the
'Essay on Man', the 'Satires, Epistles', and 'Moral Essays', were but
parts of one stupendous whole. He told Spence in the last years of his
life: "I had once thought of completing my ethic work in four
books.--The first, you know, is on the Nature of Man [the 'Essay on
Man']; the second would have been on knowledge and its limits--here
would have come in an Essay on Education, part of which I have inserted
in the 'Dunciad' ['i.e.' in the Fourth Book, published in 1742]. The
third was to have treated of Government, both ecclesiastical and
civil--and this was what chiefly stopped my going on. I could not have
said what 'I would' have said without provoking every church on the face
of the earth; and I did not care for living always in boiling
water.--This part would have come into my 'Brutus' [an epic poem which
Pope never completed], which is planned already. The fourth would have
been on Morality; in eight or nine of the most concerning branches of
it."

It is difficult, if not impossible, to believe that Pope with his
irregular methods of work and illogical habit of thought had planned so
vast and elaborate a system before he began its execution. It is far
more likely that he followed his old method of composing on the
inspiration of the moment, and produced the works in question with
little thought of their relation or interdependence. But in the last
years of his life, when he had made the acquaintance of Warburton, and
was engaged in reviewing and perfecting the works of this period, he
noticed their general similarity in form and spirit, and, possibly under
Warburton's influence, conceived the notion of combining and
supplementing them to form that "Greater Essay on Man" of which he spoke
to Spence, and of which Warburton himself has given us a detailed
account.

Warburton, a wide-read, pompous, and polemical clergyman, had introduced
himself to the notice of Pope by a defense of the philosophical and
religious principles of the 'Essay on Man'. In spite of the influence of
the free-thinking Bolingbroke, Pope still remained a member of the
Catholic church and sincerely believed himself to be an orthodox, though
liberal, Christian, and he had, in consequence, been greatly
disconcerted by a criticism of his poem published in Switzerland and
lately translated into English. Its author, Pierre de Crousaz,
maintained, and with a considerable degree of truth, that the principles
of Pope's poem if pushed to their logical conclusion were destructive to
religion and would rank their author rather among atheists than
defenders of the faith. The very word "atheist" was at that day
sufficient to put the man to whom it was applied beyond the pale of
polite society, and Pope, who quite lacked the ability to refute in
logical argument the attack of de Crousaz, was proportionately delighted
when Warburton came forward in his defense, and in a series of letters
asserted that Pope's whole intention was to vindicate the ways of God to
man, and that de Crousaz had mistaken his purpose and misunderstood his
language. Pope's gratitude to his defender knew no bounds; he declared
that Warburton understood the 'Essay' better than he did himself; he
pronounced him the greatest critic he ever knew, secured an introduction
to him, introduced him to his own rich and influential friends, in short
made the man's fortune for him outright. When the University of Oxford
hesitated to give Warburton, who had never attended a university, the
degree of D.D., Pope declined to accept the degree of D.C.L. which had
been offered him at the same time, and wrote the Fourth Book of the
'Dunciad' to satirize the stupidity of the university authorities. In
conjunction with Warburton he proceeded further to revise the whole
poem, for which his new friend wrote notes and a ponderous introduction,
and made the capital mistake of substituting the frivolous, but clever,
Colley Gibber, with whom he had recently become embroiled, for his old
enemy, Theobald, as the hero. And the last year of his life was spent in
getting out new editions of his poems accompanied by elaborate
commentaries from the pen of Warburton.

In the spring of 1744, it was evident that Pope was failing fast. In
addition to his other ailments he was now attacked by an asthmatical
dropsy, which no efforts of his physicians could remove. Yet he
continued to work almost to the last, and distributed copies of his
'Ethic Epistles' to his friends about three weeks before his death, with
the smiling remark that like the dying Socrates he was dispensing his
morality among his friends. His mind began to wander; he complained that
he saw all things as through a curtain, and told Spence once "with a
smile of great pleasure and with the greatest softness" that he had seen
a vision. His friends were devoted in their attendance. Bolingbroke sat
weeping by his chair, and on Spence's remarking how Pope with every
rally was always saying something kindly of his friends, replied: "I
never in my life knew a man that had so tender a heart for his
particular friends, or a more general friendship for mankind. I have
known him these thirty years; and value myself more for that man's love
than"--here his head dropped and his voice broke in tears. It was
noticed that whenever Patty Blount came into the room, the dying flame
of life flashed up in a momentary glow. At the very end a friend
reminded Pope that as a professed Catholic he ought to send for a
priest. The dying man replied that he did not believe it essential, but
thanked him for the suggestion. When the priest appeared, Pope attempted
to rise from his bed that he might receive the sacrament kneeling, and
the priest came out from the sick room "penetrated to the last degree
with the state of mind in which he found his penitent, resigned and
wrapt up in the love of God and man." The hope that sustained Pope to
the end was that of immortality. "I am so certain of the soul's being
immortal," he whispered, almost with his last breath, "that I seem to
feel it within me, as it were by intuition." He died on the evening of
May 30, so quietly that his friends hardly knew that the end had come.
He was buried in Twickenham Church, near the monument he had erected to
his parents, and his coffin was carried to the grave by six of the
poorest men of the parish.

It is plain even from so slight a sketch as this that the common
conception of Pope as "the wicked wasp of Twickenham," a bitter,
jealous, and malignant spirit, is utterly out of accord with the facts
of his life. Pope's faults of character lie on the surface, and the most
perceptible is that which has done him most harm in the eyes of
English-speaking men. He was by nature, perhaps by training also,
untruthful. If he seldom stooped to an outright lie, he never hesitated
to equivocate; and students of his life have found that it is seldom
possible to take his word on any point where his own works or interests
were concerned. I have already (p. x) attempted to point out the
probable cause of this defect; and it is, moreover, worth while to
remark that Pope's manifold intrigues and evasions were mainly of the
defensive order. He plotted and quibbled not so much to injure others as
to protect himself. To charge Pope with treachery to his friends, as has
sometimes been done, is wholly to misunderstand his character.

Another flaw, one can hardly call it a vice, in Pope's character was his
constant practice of considering everything that came in his way as
copy. It was this which led him to reclaim his early letters from his
friends, to alter, rewrite, and redate them, utterly unconscious of the
trouble which he was preparing for his future biographers. The letters,
he thought, were good reading but not so good as he could make them, and
he set to work to improve them with all an artist's zeal, and without a
trace of a historian's care for facts. It was this which led him to
embody in his description of a rich fool's splendid house and park
certain unmistakable traces of a living nobleman's estate and to start
in genuine amazement and regret when the world insisted on identifying
the nobleman and the fool. And when Pope had once done a good piece of
work, he had all an artist's reluctance to destroy it. He kept bits of
verse by him for years and inserted them into appropriate places in his
poems. This habit it was that brought about perhaps the gravest charge
that has ever been made against Pope, that of accepting L1000 to
suppress a satiric portrait of the old Duchess of Marlborough, and yet
of publishing it in a revision of a poem that he was engaged on just
before his death. The truth seems to be that Pope had drawn this
portrait in days when he was at bitter enmity with the Duchess, and
after the reconcilement that took place, unwilling to suppress it
entirely, had worked it over, and added passages out of keeping with the
first design, but pointing to another lady with whom he was now at odds.
Pope's behavior, we must admit, was not altogether creditable, but it
was that of an artist reluctant to throw away good work, not that of a
ruffian who stabs a woman he has taken money to spare.

Finally Pope was throughout his life, and notably in his later years,
the victim of an irritable temper and a quick, abusive tongue. His
irritability sprang in part, we may believe, from his physical
sufferings, even more, however, from the exquisitely sensitive heart
which made him feel a coarse insult as others would a blow. And of the
coarseness of the insults that were heaped upon Pope no one except the
careful student of his life can have any conception. His genius, his
morals, his person, his parents, and his religion were overwhelmed in
one indiscriminate flood of abuse. Too high spirited to submit tamely to
these attacks, too irritable to laugh at them, he struck back, and his
weapon was personal satire which cut like a whip and left a brand like a
hot iron. And if at times, as in the case of Addison, Pope was mistaken
in his object and assaulted one who was in no sense his enemy, the fault
lies not so much in his alleged malice as in the unhappy state of
warfare in which he lived.

Over against the faults of Pope we may set more than one noble
characteristic. The sensitive heart and impulsive temper that led him so
often into bitter warfare, made him also most susceptible to kindness
and quick to pity suffering. He was essentially of a tender and loving
nature, a devoted son, and a loyal friend, unwearied in acts of kindness
and generosity. His ruling passion, to use his own phrase, was a
devotion to letters, and he determined as early and worked as diligently
to make himself a poet as ever Milton did. His wretched body was
dominated by a high and eager mind, and he combined in an unparalleled
degree the fiery energy of the born poet with the tireless patience of
the trained artist.

But perhaps the most remarkable characteristic of Pope is his manly
independence. In an age when almost without exception his fellow-writers
stooped to accept a great man's patronage or sold their talents into the
slavery of politics, Pope stood aloof from patron and from party. He
repeatedly declined offers of money that were made him, even when no
condition was attached. He refused to change his religion, though he was
far from being a devout Catholic, in order to secure a comfortable
place. He relied upon his genius alone for his support, and his genius
gave him all that he asked, a modest competency. His relations with his
rich and powerful friends were marked by the same independent spirit. He
never cringed or flattered, but met them on even terms, and raised
himself by merit alone from his position as the unknown son of an humble
shopkeeper to be the friend and associate of the greatest fortunes and
most powerful minds in England. It is not too much to say that the
career of a man of letters as we know it to-day, a career at once
honorable and independent, takes its rise from the life and work of
Alexander Pope.

The long controversies that have raged about Pope's rank as a poet seem
at last to be drawing to a close; and it has become possible to strike a
balance between the exaggerated praise of his contemporaries and the
reckless depreciation of romantic critics. That he is not a poet of the
first order is plain, if for no other reason than that he never produced
a work in any of the greatest forms of poetry. The drama, the epic, the
lyric, were all outside his range. On the other hand, unless a
definition of poetry be framed--and Dr. Johnson has well remarked that
"to circumscribe poetry by a definition will only show the narrowness of
the definer"--which shall exclude all gnomic and satiric verse, and so
debar the claims of Hesiod, Juvenal, and Boileau, it is impossible to
deny that Pope is a true poet. Certain qualities of the highest poet
Pope no doubt lacked, lofty imagination, intense passion, wide human
sympathy. But within the narrow field which he marked out for his own he
approaches perfection as nearly as any English poet, and Pope's merit
consists not merely in the smoothness of his verse or the polish of
separate epigrams, as is so often stated, but quite as much in the vigor
of his conceptions and the unity and careful proportion of each poem as
a whole. It is not too much to say that 'The Rape of the Lock' is one of
the best-planned poems in any language. It is as symmetrical and
exquisitely finished as a Grecian temple.

Historically Pope represents the fullest embodiment of that spirit which
began to appear in English literature about the middle of the
seventeenth century, and which we are accustomed to call the "classical"
spirit. In essence this movement was a protest against the irregularity
and individual license of earlier poets. Instead of far-fetched wit and
fanciful diction, the classical school erected the standards of common
sense in conception and directness in expression. And in so doing they
restored poetry which had become the diversion of the few to the
possession of the many. Pope, for example, is preeminently the poet of
his time. He dealt with topics that were of general interest to the
society in which he lived; he pictured life as he saw it about him. And
this accounts for his prompt and general acceptance by the world of his
day.

For the student of English literature Pope's work has a threefold value.
It represents the highest achievement of one of the great movements in
the developments of English verse. It reflects with unerring accuracy
the life and thought of his time--not merely the outward life of beau
and belle in the days of Queen Anne, but the ideals of the age in art,
philosophy, and politics. And finally it teaches as hardly any other
body of English verse can be said to do, the perennial value of
conscious and controlling art. Pope's work lives and will live while
English poetry is read, not because of its inspiration, imagination, or
depth of thought, but by its unity of design, vigor of expression, and
perfection of finish--by those qualities, in short, which show the poet
as an artist in verse.

CHIEF DATES IN POPE'S LIFE

1688 Born, May 21.

1700 Moves to Binfield.

1709 'Pastorals'.

1711 'Essay on Criticism'.

1711-12 Contributes to 'Spectator'.

1712 'Rape of the Lock', first form.

1713 'Windsor Forest'.

1713 Issues proposals for translation of Homer.

1714 'Rape of the Lock', second form.

1715 First volume of the 'Iliad'.

1715 'Temple of Fame'.

1717 Pope's father dies.

1717 'Works', including some new poems.

1719 Settles at Twickenham.

1720 Sixth and last volume of the 'Iliad'.

1722 Begins translation of 'Odyssey'.

1725 Edits Shakespeare.

1726 Finishes translation of 'Odyssey'.

1727-8 'Miscellanies' by Pope and Swift.

1728-9 'Dunciad'.

1731-2 'Moral Essays': 'Of Taste', 'Of the Use of Riches'.

1733-4 'Essay on Man'.

1733-8 'Satires and Epistles'.

1735 'Works'.

1735 'Letters' published by Curll.

1741 'Works in Prose'; vol. II. includes the correspondence with Swift.

1742 Fourth book of 'Dunciad'.

1742 Revised 'Dunciad'.

1744 Died, May 30.

1751 First collected edition, published by Warburton, 9 vols.

* * * * *

SELECTIONS FROM POPE

* * * * *

THE RAPE OF THE LOCK

AN HEROI-COMICAL POEM

Nolueram, Belinda, tuos violare capillos;
Sed juvat, hoc precibus me tribuisse tuis.

Mart, [Epigr, XII. 84.]

TO MRS. ARABELLA FERMOR

MADAM,

It will be in vain to deny that I have some regard for this piece, since
I dedicate it to You. Yet you may bear me witness, it was intended only
to divert a few young Ladies, who have good sense and good humour enough
to laugh not only at their sex's little unguarded follies, but at their
own. But as it was communicated with the air of a Secret, it soon found
its way into the world. An imperfect copy having been offer'd to a
Bookseller, you had the good-nature for my sake to consent to the
publication of one more correct: This I was forc'd to, before I had
executed half my design, for the Machinery was entirely wanting to
compleat it.

The Machinery, Madam, is a term invented by the Critics, to signify that
part which the Deities, Angels, or Daemons are made to act in a Poem:
For the ancient Poets are in one respect like many modern Ladies: let an
action be never so trivial in itself, they always make it appear of the
utmost importance. These Machines I determined to raise on a very new
and odd foundation, the Rosicrucian doctrine of Spirits.

I know how disagreeable it is to make use of hard words before a Lady;
but't is so much the concern of a Poet to have his works understood, and
particularly by your Sex, that you must give me leave to explain two or
three difficult terms.

The Rosicrucians are a people I must bring you acquainted with. The best
account I know of them is in a French book call'd 'Le Comte de
Gabalis', which both in its title and size is so like a Novel, that
many of the Fair Sex have read it for one by mistake. According to these
Gentlemen, the four Elements are inhabited by Spirits, which they call
Sylphs, Gnomes, Nymphs, and Salamanders. The Gnomes or Daemons of Earth
delight in mischief; but the Sylphs whose habitation is in the Air, are
the best-condition'd creatures imaginable. For they say, any mortals may
enjoy the most intimate familiarities with these gentle Spirits, upon a
condition very easy to all true Adepts, an inviolate preservation of
Chastity.

As to the following Canto's, all the passages of them are as fabulous,
as the Vision at the beginning, or the Transformation at the end;
(except the loss of your Hair, which I always mention with reverence).
The Human persons are as fictitious as the airy ones; and the character
of Belinda, as it is now manag'd, resembles you in nothing but in
Beauty.

If this Poem had as many Graces as there are in your Person, or in your
Mind, yet I could never hope it should pass thro' the world half so
Uncensur'd as You have done. But let its fortune be what it will, mine
is happy enough, to have given me this occasion of assuring you that I
am, with the truest esteem, Madam,

Your most obedient, Humble Servant,

A. Pope

CANTO I

What dire offence from am'rous causes springs,
What mighty contests rise from trivial things,
I sing--This verse to CARYL, Muse! is due:
This, ev'n Belinda may vouchsafe to view:
Slight is the subject, but not so the praise, 5
If She inspire, and He approve my lays.

Say what strange motive, Goddess! could compel
A well-bred Lord t' assault a gentle Belle?
O say what stranger cause, yet unexplor'd,
Could make a gentle Belle reject a Lord? 10
In tasks so bold, can little men engage,
And in soft bosoms dwells such mighty Rage?

Sol thro' white curtains shot a tim'rous ray,
And oped those eyes that must eclipse the day:
Now lap-dogs give themselves the rousing shake, 15
And sleepless lovers, just at twelve, awake:
Thrice rung the bell, the slipper knock'd the ground,
And the press'd watch return'd a silver sound.
Belinda still her downy pillow prest,
Her guardian SYLPH prolong'd the balmy rest: 20
'Twas He had summon'd to her silent bed
The morning-dream that hover'd o'er her head;
A Youth more glitt'ring than a Birth-night Beau,
(That ev'n in slumber caus'd her cheek to glow)
Seem'd to her ear his winning lips to lay, 25
And thus in whispers said, or seem'd to say.

Fairest of mortals, thou distinguish'd care
Of thousand bright Inhabitants of Air!
If e'er one vision touch.'d thy infant thought,
Of all the Nurse and all the Priest have taught; 30
Of airy Elves by moonlight shadows seen,
The silver token, and the circled green,
Or virgins visited by Angel-pow'rs,
With golden crowns and wreaths of heav'nly flow'rs;
Hear and believe! thy own importance know, 35
Nor bound thy narrow views to things below.
Some secret truths, from learned pride conceal'd,
To Maids alone and Children are reveal'd:
What tho' no credit doubting Wits may give?
The Fair and Innocent shall still believe. 40
Know, then, unnumber'd Spirits round thee fly,
The light Militia of the lower sky:
These, tho' unseen, are ever on the wing,
Hang o'er the Box, and hover round the Ring.
Think what an equipage thou hast in Air, 45
And view with scorn two Pages and a Chair.
As now your own, our beings were of old,
And once inclos'd in Woman's beauteous mould;
Thence, by a soft transition, we repair
From earthly Vehicles to these of air. 50
Think not, when Woman's transient breath is fled
That all her vanities at once are dead;
Succeeding vanities she still regards,
And tho' she plays no more, o'erlooks the cards.
Her joy in gilded Chariots, when alive, 55
And love of Ombre, after death survive.
For when the Fair in all their pride expire,
To their first Elements their Souls retire:
The Sprites of fiery Termagants in Flame
Mount up, and take a Salamander's name. 60
Soft yielding minds to Water glide away,
And sip, with Nymphs, their elemental Tea.
The graver Prude sinks downward to a Gnome,
In search of mischief still on Earth to roam.
The light Coquettes in Sylphs aloft repair, 65
And sport and flutter in the fields of Air.

"Know further yet; whoever fair and chaste
Rejects mankind, is by some Sylph embrac'd:
For Spirits, freed from mortal laws, with ease
Assume what sexes and what shapes they please. 70
What guards the purity of melting Maids,
In courtly balls, and midnight masquerades,
Safe from the treach'rous friend, the daring spark,
The glance by day, the whisper in the dark,
When kind occasion prompts their warm desires, 75
When music softens, and when dancing fires?
'Tis but their Sylph, the wise Celestials know,
Tho' Honour is the word with Men below.

Some nymphs there are, too conscious of their face,
For life predestin'd to the Gnomes' embrace. 80
These swell their prospects and exalt their pride,
When offers are disdain'd, and love deny'd:
Then gay Ideas crowd the vacant brain,
While Peers, and Dukes, and all their sweeping train,
And Garters, Stars, and Coronets appear, 85
And in soft sounds, Your Grace salutes their ear.
'T is these that early taint the female soul,
Instruct the eyes of young Coquettes to roll,
Teach Infant-cheeks a bidden blush to know,
And little hearts to flutter at a Beau. 90

Oft, when the world imagine women stray,
The Sylphs thro' mystic mazes guide their way,
Thro' all the giddy circle they pursue,
And old impertinence expel by new.
What tender maid but must a victim fall 95
To one man's treat, but for another's ball?
When Florio speaks what virgin could withstand,
If gentle Damon did not squeeze her hand?
With varying vanities, from ev'ry part,
They shift the moving Toyshop of their heart; 100
Where wigs with wigs, with sword-knots sword-knots strive,
Beaux banish beaux, and coaches coaches drive.
This erring mortals Levity may call;
Oh blind to truth! the Sylphs contrive it all.

Of these am I, who thy protection claim, 105
A watchful sprite, and Ariel is my name.
Late, as I rang'd the crystal wilds of air,
In the clear Mirror of thy ruling Star
I saw, alas! some dread event impend,
Ere to the main this morning sun descend, 110
But heav'n reveals not what, or how, or where:
Warn'd by the Sylph, oh pious maid, beware!
This to disclose is all thy guardian can:
Beware of all, but most beware of Man!"

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