The Works of Alexander Pope Part 64

BY MR. POPE.

Folio, 1713.

Non injussa cano: te nostrae. Vare, myricae, Te nemus omne canet; nec Phoebo gratior ulla est, Quam sibi quae Vari praescripsit pagina nomen.--VIRG.

London: Printed for BERNARD LINTOTT, at the Cross-keys, in Fleet Street.

The work appeared before March 9, 1713, on which day Swift writes to Stella, "Mr. Pope has published a fine poem, called Windsor Forest. Read it." In his ma.n.u.script Pope says, "It was first printed in folio in ----. Again in folio the same year, and in octavo the next." It was included in the quarto of 1717, in the second edition of Lintot's Miscellany in 1714, and in the four succeeding editions of 1720, 1722, 1727 and 1732.

This poem was written at two different times. The first part of it, which relates to the country, in the year 1704, at the same time with the Pastorals. The latter part was not added till the year 1713, in which it was published.--POPE.

In 1713 Pope published Windsor Forest; of which part was, as he relates, written at sixteen, about the same time as his Pastorals; and the latter part was added afterwards: where the addition begins we are not told.[1]

The lines relating to the Peace confess their own date. It is dedicated to Lord Lansdowne, who was then in high reputation and influence among the tories; and it is said, that the conclusion of the poem gave great pain to Addison, both as a poet and a politician. Reports like this are often spread with boldness very disproportionate to their evidence. Why should Addison receive any particular disturbance from the last lines of Windsor Forest? If contrariety of opinion could poison a politician, he would not live a day; and, as a poet, he must have felt Pope's force of genius much more from many other parts of his works. The pain that Addison might feel, it is not likely that he would confess; and it is certain that he so well suppressed his discontent, that Pope now thought himself his favourite.

The design of Windsor Forest is evidently derived from Cooper's Hill, with some attention to Waller's poem on the Park; but Pope cannot be denied to excel his masters in variety and elegance, and the art of interchanging description, narrative, and morality. The objection made by Dennis is the want of plan, of a regular subordination of parts, terminating in the princ.i.p.al and original design. There is this want in most descriptive poems, because as the scenes, which they must exhibit successively, are all subsisting at the same time, the order in which they are shown must, by necessity, be arbitrary, and more is not to be expected from the last part than from the first. The attention, therefore, which cannot be detained by suspense, must be excited by diversity, such as this poem offers to its reader. But the desire of diversity may be too much indulged. The parts of Windsor Forest which deserve least praise are those which were added to enliven the stillness of the scene--the appearance of Father Thames, and the transformation of Lodona. Addison had, in his Campaign, derided the rivers, that "rise from their oozy beds" to tell stories of heroes;[2] and it is therefore strange that Pope should adopt a fiction not only unnatural, but lately censured. The story of Lodona is told with sweetness; but a new metamorphosis is a ready and puerile expedient. Nothing is easier than to tell how a flower was once a blooming virgin, or a rock an obdurate tyrant.--JOHNSON.

Descriptive poetry was by no means the s.h.i.+ning talent of Pope. This a.s.sertion may be manifested by the few images introduced in the poem before us which are not equally applicable to any place whatsoever.

Rural beauty in general, and not the peculiar beauties of the forest of Windsor, are here described. Nor are the sports of setting, shooting, and fis.h.i.+ng, at all more appropriated. The stag-chase, that immediately follows, although some of the lines are incomparably good, is not so full, so animated, and so circ.u.mstantial, as that of Somerville.--WARTON.

Johnson remarks that this poem was written after the model of Denham's Cooper's Hill, with, perhaps, an eye on Waller's poem of the Park.

Marvel has also written a poem on local scenery[3]--upon the hill and grove at Billborow, and another on Appleton House (now Nunappleton), in Yorks.h.i.+re. Marvel abounds with conceits and false thoughts, but some of the descriptive touches are picturesque and beautiful. He sometimes observes little circ.u.mstances of rural nature with the eye and feeling of a true poet:

Then as I careless on the bed Of gelid strawberries do tread, And through the hazels thick espy The _hatching thrustle's s.h.i.+ning eye_.

The last circ.u.mstance is new, highly poetical, and could only have been described by one who was a real lover of nature, and a witness of her beauties in her most solitary retirements. Before this descriptive poem on Windsor Forest, I do not recollect any other professed composition on local scenery, except the poems of the authors already mentioned.

Denham's is certainly the best prior to Pope's: his description of London at a distance is sublime:[4]

Under his proud survey the city lies, And like a mist beneath a hill does rise, Whose state and wealth, the bus'ness and the crowd, Seems at this distance but a _darker cloud_.

Pope, by the expression of "majestic," has justly characterised the flow of Denham's couplets. It is extraordinary that Pope, who, by this expression, seems to have appreciated the general cast of harmony in Cooper's Hill, should have made his own cadences so regular and almost unvaried. Denham's couplets are often irregular, but the effect of the pauses in the following lines was obviously the result of a fine ear.

The language truly suits the subject:

But his proud head the airy mountain hides Among the clouds; his shoulders and his sides A shady mantle clothes; his curled brows Frown on the gentle stream, which calmly flows, Whilst winds and storms his lofty forehead beat!

The occasional introduction of such pa.s.sages should be managed with great care, but I appeal to any judge of poetry whether he does not feel the effect intended to be raised by the pauses of the lines just quoted?

He who has not an eye to observe every external appearance that nature may exhibit in every change of season, and who cannot with a glance distinguish every diversity of every hue in her variety of beauties, must so far be deficient in one of the essential qualities of a poet.

Here Pope, from infirmities and from physical causes, was particularly deficient. When he left his own laurel circus at Twickenham, he was lifted into his chariot or his barge; and with weak eyes and tottering strength, it is physically impossible he could be a descriptive bard.

Where description has been introduced among his poems, as far as his observation could go, he excelled; more could not be expected. It is for this reason that his Windsor Forest, and his Pastorals, must ever appear so defective to a lover of nature. In his Windsor Forest he has description, incident, and history. The descriptive part is too general, and unappropriate; the incident, or story part, is such as only would have been adopted by a young man who had just read Ovid; but the historical part is very judiciously and skilfully blended, and the conclusion highly animated and poetical: nor can we be insensible to its more lofty tone of versification.--BOWLES.

Richardson transcribed the various readings of Windsor Forest into his copy of the quarto of 1717, and added this note:--"Altered from the first copy of the author's own hand, written out beautifully, as usual, for the perusal and criticism of his friends." The ma.n.u.script in Richardson's possession did not contain the entire work, but stopped at ver. 390. On the t.i.tle-page of the ma.n.u.script was a memorandum by Pope, which says, "This poem was written just after the Pastorals, as appears by the last verse of it. That was in the year ----, when the author was ---- years of age. But the last hundred lines, including the celebration of the Peace, were added in the year ----, soon after the ratification of the treaty of Utrecht." Pope supplied the omitted dates in the octavo of 1736, where he ascribes the former part of Windsor Forest to 1704, and the latter part to 1710. The testimony of Pope carries little weight, and there is no subsidiary evidence to confirm the improbable statement that the larger portion of the poem was produced as early as 1704. The date he a.s.signed to the remainder, in a note at ver. 1 of the edition of 1736, and again in a note on ver. 289, must have been a slip of the pen, or an error of the press. Warburton altered 1710 to 1713 in the first note, and left the mistake uncorrected in the second. The amended date was a fresh blunder, for it appears from the letters of Pope to Caryll on Nov. 29, and Dec. 5, 1712, that the new conclusion was then complete. Pope's memory deceived him when he stated that the end of the poem was written "soon after the ratification of the treaty of Utrecht." The treaty, as Mr. Croker remarks, was not signed till March 30, 1713, nor ratified till April 28, and Windsor Forest was published before March 9. The Peace had for some months been an accepted fact, and Pope did not wait for its formal ratification.

"Lord Lansdowne," said Pope to Spence, "insisted on my publis.h.i.+ng my Windsor Forest, and the motto (_non injussa cano_) shows it."[5] Pope not only published, but composed Windsor Forest at the instigation of Lord Lansdowne, if the opening lines of the poem are to be believed.

Trumbull, however, a.s.serts that it was he who suggested the topic to Pope. "I should have commended his poem on Windsor Forest much more,"

wrote Sir William to Mr. Bridges, May 12, 1713, "if he had not served me a slippery trick; for you must know I had long since put him upon this subject, gave several hints, and at last, when he brought it, and read it, and made some little alterations, &c., not one word of putting in my name till I found it in print." The apparent discrepancy may be explained by the supposition that Trumbull proposed the earlier poem on the Forest, and Lord Lansdowne the subsequent celebration of the Peace.

The poet tacked the new matter on to the old, and may have represented that he sang at the command of Granville, because the ultimate form which the work a.s.sumed was due to him.

Mrs. Delany, who was the niece of Lord Lansdowne, and lived with him in her youth, says, in her Autobiography, that he was a man of an open unsuspecting temper, that he had the greatest politeness and good-humour imaginable, that he was magnificent in his nature, and wasted his fortune to gratify his pa.s.sion for display.[6] His predominant characteristics were amiability and vanity. His love of distinction incited him to become a dramatist, poet, and politician. He had aspirations without ability, and in none of these capacities did he exhibit any vigour of mind. His poetry was an imitation of Waller, "of whom," says Johnson, "he copied the faults, and very little more."[7]

His plays reflect the worst qualities of the era of Charles II. In tragedy he thought that to be dull and stately was to be cla.s.sical; in comedy that affected briskness of dialogue was liveliness, and indecent double meanings wit. He made no figure in politics, and owed his posts in the Harley administration to his wealth, family, and electioneering influence. His literature, aided by his hereditary advantages, sufficed to procure him a fact.i.tious fame while he lived, but his reputation was at an end the moment his works lost the l.u.s.tre they derived from his social position.

Lord Lansdowne was at the zenith of his career when he persuaded Pope to eulogise the Peace. A measure in itself wise had been made subservient to the personal interests of the unprincipled faction in power. These intriguers could not carry on the war without the commanding genius of Marlborough, nor allow a political opponent to perpetuate his ascendancy by a fresh series of victories. Certain that they would be driven from office unless they could huddle up a peace, they were guilty of a treacherous connivance with the enemy, and a flagrant breach of faith towards their allies. They were compelled to grant terms to France which were the boast of her minister, Torcy, and which Bolingbroke confessed were not what policy or our successes required.[8] A man of more enlightened views might have justly urged that hard conditions, offensive to the pride of a great nation, were less calculated to ensure a lengthened peace than lenient demands, which allowed the consolation of an honourable retreat. No such plea was put forth by Bolingbroke. He always retained the vulgar idea that France ought to have been "humbled"

and her "power reduced for generations to come." He lamented the moderation of the treaty, and threw the blame upon the want of union among the allies, which was itself occasioned by the knowledge that he and his colleagues had determined to sacrifice all other interests to their own.[9] There was a risk that a treaty which was thought inadequate by its authors would rouse universal indignation, and prove as fatal to their power as the continuance of the war. The Peace became the political test of the hour, and every artifice of prose and verse was employed to appease public opinion.

Pope did not stop with applauding the Peace; he denounced the Revolution. He afterwards professed a lofty superiority to party prejudices; but there were obvious reasons which might induce him to lay aside his usual caution at this crisis. The war was directed against Louis XIV., the champion of Roman Catholicism, and the Pretender. A general belief prevailed that the Protestant succession could only be secured by reducing the French king to helplessness, and that a Peace, on the other hand, which saved him and the Harley administration from ruin, would be propitious to the cause of tories, papists, and Jacobites. "They fancied," says Bolingbroke, "that the Peace was the period at which their millenary year would begin."[10] A young and sanguine poet may well have shared a conviction in which both sides concurred,--the ministerialists by their hopes, and the opposition by their fears. No sooner was the treaty concluded than it became apparent that the hopes and fears were exaggerated. The ministry was torn to pieces by intestine divisions; its supporters--a heterogeneous body, who had been loosely held together by a common enmity--were rapidly throwing off their allegiance; the good will, which had been founded upon large and vague expectations, was converted into hostility under total disappointment; and the failing health of the Queen rendered it probable that the accession of a whig sovereign would shortly complete the discomfiture of the faction. After the conclusion of the Peace, says Bolingbroke, "we saw nothing but increase of mortification, and nearer approaches to ruin."[11]

Having been too precipitate in casting in his lot with the tories, Pope hastened to qualify his rashness by conciliating the whigs, and undertook to furnish the Prologue to Addison's Cato. This play was brought out April 14, 1713, at the request of the opposition, who intended it for a remonstrance against the arbitrary projects imputed to the ministry. The tragedy was hurried upon the stage towards the close of the dramatic season, lest the salutary lesson should come too late to save the threatened const.i.tution.[12] Pope told Spence that the ma.n.u.script was submitted to him by Addison, that he thought the action not sufficiently theatrical, and that he recommended the author to forego its performance. Shortly afterwards Addison went to him and said, "that some particular friends, whom he could not disoblige, insisted on its being acted." He protested that he had no party purpose in the play, commissioned Pope to convey this a.s.surance to Oxford and Bolingbroke, sent them the tragedy along with the message, and obtained their encouragement. When a year and a half had elapsed, and the House of Hanover had succeeded to the English throne, Addison published in Nov.

1714, a copy of verses to the Princess of Wales, in which he took credit for the patriotism and daring of his muse in sending forth the play with the express design of defeating the machinations of the government.[13]

And boldly rising for Britannia's laws, Engaged great Cato in her country's cause.

Hurd, unwilling to condemn his hero, Addison, and accepting, without misgiving, the statement reported by Spence, exclaims, "How spotless must that man be, that, in pa.s.sing through a court, had only contracted this slight stain, even in the opinion of so severe a censor and casuist as Mr. Pope."[14] But unless the conduct of Addison is misrepresented he must have been corrupt and contemptible. The party of which he was a prominent member urged the production of his play, at a momentous crisis, with a political object, and it would have been mean and treacherous to yield to their entreaties, and then privately a.s.sure the common enemy that nothing political was intended. The baseness would have been great indeed if, when the power pa.s.sed over to the whigs, he triumphantly declared that he had pursued the very course he disavowed at the time, and thus endeavoured by a false boast to procure new credit and rewards. Either Addison was unscrupulous, or Pope fabricated the tale. Addison's version was published to the world: Pope's version was dropped into the ear of Spence. Addison made his claim when the circ.u.mstances were fresh, and when Pope, Bolingbroke, and Oxford were at hand to expose him: Pope told his story after the lapse of many years, when he had quarrelled with Addison, and the subject of his aspersions was in the grave. Addison has never been convicted of an untruthful word, or a dishonourable act: Pope's career was a labyrinth of deceit, and he abounded in audacious malignant inventions. These considerations are sufficient, but there is more direct evidence. "I have had lately,"

wrote Pope to Caryll, Feb. 1713, "the entertainment of reading Mr.

Addison's tragedy of Cato. It drew tears from me in several parts of the fourth and fifth acts, where the beauty of virtue appears so charming, that I believe, if it comes upon the theatre, we shall enjoy that which Plato thought the greatest pleasure an exalted soul could be capable of, a view of virtue itself dressed in person, colour, and action. The emotion which the mind will feel from this character, and the sentiments of humanity which the distress of such a person as Cato will stir up in us, must necessarily fill an audience with so glorious a disposition and sovereign a love of virtue, that I question if any play has ever conduced so immediately to morals as this." Here is Pope prognosticating that Cato upon the stage will melt, delight, and animate the audience.

He penned the words at the exact period when, according to his later a.s.sertion, he was admonis.h.i.+ng Addison that the play was unsuited to the theatre, and he is self-convicted by the contradiction. One-half of his story was false, and renders the other half worthless.[15]

In the account which Pope gave to Caryll of the first night of Cato he said that "all the foolish industry possible had been used to make it a party play," and complained that "the prologue writer was clapped into a stanch whig, sore against his will, at almost every two lines."[16] He might be anxious to persuade his jacobite correspondent that he had not been abetting a whig manifesto, and might pretend that he was annoyed at the construction put upon the Prologue, but his verses were chiefly devoted to enforcing the political doctrine of the play, and he must deliberately have laid himself out to catch the applause of its friends.

His management advanced his fortunes. Windsor Forest procured him the acquaintance and patronage of the tory leaders. Swift recommended the poem to Stella on March 9, 1713, and in November he was heard by Dr.

Kennet "instructing a young n.o.bleman that the best poet in England was Mr. Pope, a papist, who had begun a translation of Homer into English verse, for which he must have them all subscribe, 'for,' says he, 'the author shall not begin to print till I have a thousand guineas for him.'"[17] The other magnates of the faction joined with Swift in befriending him. In those heated times a Roman Catholic who had won over one party to his interests, by proclaiming his jacobite bias in verse, would naturally have fallen under the ban of their opponents; but his standing sponsor for the whig play, and the relations he maintained with whig authors, kept the whigs from renouncing him. To his art in attracting notice to his poetry through his politics, and in combining the suffrages of embittered political antagonists, he owed the unexampled success of the Homer subscription, which secured his pecuniary independence. He had served both masters by turns, though in unequal degrees, and then unreasonably complained to Caryll that some people called him a whig, and others called him a tory.[18] He disclaimed being either. He talked of his abhorrence of party violence, and propounded his principles in dark unmeaning generalities from which nothing can be gathered, except that he wished to avoid being held responsible for any opinions whatever. He did not take up the position that a purely literary undertaking was independent of politics. The moment the tory cause declined he pleaded his neutrality, and seemed to imagine that he could claim the support of all parties on the ground that he adhered to none. The less wary patron who bespoke Windsor Forest had to suffer for his jacobite zeal. He was arrested on Sept. 21, 1715, and remained in the Tower till Feb. 8, 1717. Bolingbroke and Oxford were impeached, and the selfish bargain they had brought about by dishonourable means, that they might prolong their rule, annihilated their power for ever.

"A person," says Warton, "of no small rank has informed me, that Mr.

Addison was inexpressibly chagrined at the n.o.ble conclusion of Windsor Forest, both as a politician and as a poet,--as a politician, because it so highly celebrated that treaty of peace which he deemed so pernicious to the liberties of Europe; and as a poet, because he was deeply conscious that his own Campaign, that gazette in rhyme, contained no strokes of such genuine and sublime poetry."[19] This is one of those plausible imputations which enemies propagate on the evidence of their own suspicions, and which therefore require to be substantiated by unexceptionable testimony. Warton had nothing better to adduce in support of the credibility of his informant than the irrelevant circ.u.mstance that he was "a person of no small rank." The description of the witness declares his incompetence. It is not pretended that the "person of no small rank" was intimate with Addison, or had any authentic means of ascertaining his sentiments, and they are certainly misrepresented by the a.s.sertion that he could not endure poetical panegyrics on a Peace he disapproved, for in the Spectator of Oct. 30, 1712, he wrote up Tickell's laudatory verses, and "hoped his poem would meet with such a reward from its patrons as so n.o.ble a performance deserved."[20] There is not a party word added to extenuate the praise; a tory might have endorsed the essay. Intolerance and "inexpressible chagrin" were not at any time characteristics of Addison.

Tickell's Prospect of Peace went through six editions, and to judge by the sale was more popular than Windsor Forest, which was published four months later. The greater success of the far inferior poem was doubtless owing to the eulogium in the Spectator. Pope joined in applauding Tickell's work. He said that it contained "several most poetical images, and fine pieces of painting," he specified certain "strokes of mastery,"

and he especially commended the versification.[21] His too liberal praise may have been influenced by the couplet in which Tickell exclaimed,

Like the young spreading laurel, Pope! thy name Shoots up with strength and rises into fame.

Nearly the whole of the poem is in an equally dreary style, and this dull mediocrity was not attained without numerous imitations of ancient and modern authors. The insipidity did not exclude extravagance; for both poetry and patriotism were thought to be displayed by a nonsensical exaggeration of British beauty, valour, and power.

Windsor Forest is not free from flat pa.s.sages, inflation of sentiment, and false and puerile thoughts. Pope mixed up in it the beauties of his manlier period with the vices of his early style. No writer clung more tenaciously to the lifeless phantoms of paganism, nor applied the hereditary common-places in a more servile manner. Liberty is "Britannia's G.o.ddess;" the sun is "Phoebus' fiery car;" the sea is "Neptune's self;" the harvest is "Ceres' gifts;" the orchard is "Pomona crowned with fruits;" the ground is "painted by blus.h.i.+ng Flora; "and the flocks on the hills are attended by Pan. This last personage leaves his innocent pastoral employment to chase, with evil intentions, "a rural nymph" who calls on "Father Thames" for aid. Father Thames is deaf or indifferent, and Pan is about to clutch her when at her own request she is dissolved into a river. Before her transformation she was one of the "buskined virgins" of Diana, what time the G.o.ddess forsook "Cynthus'

top" for Windsor, and was often seen roving there over the "airy wastes." There was no occasion now to envy "Arcadia the immortal huntress and her virgin train," since Windsor could boast

As bright a G.o.ddess, and as chaste a queen,

and the poet proceeds to complete the comparison between Diana and Queen Anne,--between the virgin huntress, and a prolific mother, who was ugly, corpulent, gouty, sluggish, a glutton and a tippler. Pope afterwards affected a disdain of royalty; he was ready enough to flatter it when he had his own ends to serve. He could not have devised a less felicitous compliment. Tickell's poem was specially praised in the Spectator for its freedom from the follies of "pagan theology." Addison laughed at the whole tiresome tribe of G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses, and, with good-humoured pleasantry, warned the versifiers, who were about to celebrate the Peace, against introducing "trifling antiquated fables unpardonable in a poet that was past sixteen." He laid stress upon the circ.u.mstance that in a panegyric, which should be distinguished for truth, "nothing could be more ridiculous than to have recourse to our Jupiters and Junos,"[22]

and no incongruity of the kind could be more absurd than to couple Diana and Queen Anne. Windsor Forest was still in ma.n.u.script when Addison's essay appeared. Pope was not at the pains to re-cast his poem, but he must have recognised the force of the playful satire, and thenceforward he abjured mythological trash.

The pa.s.sage on the death of Cowley exemplifies, in a short compa.s.s, the unskilful use to which Pope put the worn-out rags of antiquity:

O early lost! what tears the river shed, When the sad pomp along his banks was led!

His drooping swans on ev'ry note expire, And on his willows hung each muse's lyre.

"The appropriate business of poetry," says Wordsworth, "her privilege, and her duty, is to treat of things not as they are, but as they appear; not as they exist in themselves, but as they seem to exist to the senses and pa.s.sions."[23] Since genuine emotions are often founded upon fancies, since thoughts are not always the true reflection of outward realities, poetasters, and even poets, have concluded that they might represent things neither as they are nor as they appear, might neglect nature altogether, and be unfaithful alike to the world of intelligence, and the world of matter. To this spurious cla.s.s of invention belong the notions that a river, which had flowed for ages, was the tears of the river-G.o.d lamenting the newly-deceased Cowley, and that all the swans on the Thames died with grief on the day of his funeral. The mind refuses to admit such jejune and monstrous fictions among the illusions of imagination. The compound of mythological and biblical ideas in the fourth line has converted a pathetic incident in the Psalms into a cold and miserable conceit. The harp of the Jew was a reality; and when he wept over his captivity by the rivers of Babylon he hung up his harp in very truth because his broken spirit would not permit him to sing the Lord's song in a strange land. There is, on the contrary, only hollow pedantry in the pretence that non-existent muses hung up non-existent lyres on the willows of the Thames because Cowley was dead. The pa.s.sage goes on in the same empty artificial strain:

Who now shall charm the shades, where Cowley strung His living harp, and lofty Denham sung?

But hark! the groves rejoice, the forest rings!

Are these revived?--or is it Granville sings?