Rape of the Lock and Other Poems | Page 3

love; his outward form is downright monkey." A rival poet whom he had offended hung up a rod in a coffee house where men of letters resorted, and threatened to whip Pope like a naughty child if he showed his face there. It is said, though perhaps not on the best authority, that when Pope once forgot himself so far as to make love to Lady Mary Wortley Montague, the lady's answer was "a fit of immoderate laughter." In an appendix to the 'Dunciad' Pope collected some of the epithets with which his enemies had pelted him, "an ape," "an ass," "a frog," "a coward," "a fool," "a little abject thing." He affected, indeed, to despise his assailants, but there is only too good evidence that their poisoned arrows rankled in his heart. Richardson, the painter, found him one day reading the latest abusive pamphlet. "These things are my diversion," said the poet, striving to put the best face on it; but as he read, his friends saw his features "writhen with anguish," and prayed to be delivered from all such "diversions" as these. Pope's enemies and their savage abuse are mostly forgotten to-day. Pope's furious retorts have been secured to immortality by his genius. It would have been nobler, no doubt, to have answered by silence only; but before one condemns Pope it is only fair to realize the causes of his bitterness.
Pope's education was short and irregular. He was taught the rudiments of Latin and Greek by his family priest, attended for a brief period a school in the country and another in London, and at the early age of twelve left school altogether, and settling down at his father's house in the country began to read to his heart's delight. He roamed through the classic poets, translating passages that pleased him, went up for a time to London to get lessons in French and Italian, and above all read with eagerness and attention the works of older English poets,--Spenser, Waller, and Dryden. He had already, it would seem, determined to become a poet, and his father, delighted with the clever boy's talent, used to set him topics, force him to correct his verses over and over, and finally, when satisfied, dismiss him with the praise, "These are good rhymes." He wrote a comedy, a tragedy, an epic poem, all of which he afterward destroyed and, as he laughingly confessed in later years, he thought himself "the greatest genius that ever was."
Pope was not alone, however, in holding a high opinion of his talents. While still a boy in his teens he was taken up and patronized by a number of gentlemen, Trumbull, Walsh, and Cromwell, all dabblers in poetry and criticism. He was introduced to the dramatist Wycherly, nearly fifty years his senior, and helped to polish some of the old man's verses. His own works were passed about in manuscript from hand to hand till one of them came to the eyes of Dryden's old publisher, Tonson. Tonson wrote Pope a respectful letter asking for the honor of being allowed to publish them. One may fancy the delight with which the sixteen-year-old boy received this offer. It is a proof of Pope's patience as well as his precocity that he delayed three years before accepting it. It was not till 1709 that his first published verses, the 'Pastorals', a fragment translated from Homer, and a modernized version of one of the 'Canterbury Tales', appeared in Tonson's 'Miscellany'.
With the publication of the 'Pastorals', Pope embarked upon his life as a man of letters. They seem to have brought him a certain recognition, but hardly fame. That he obtained by his next poem, the 'Essay on Criticism', which appeared in 1711. It was applauded in the 'Spectator', and Pope seems about this time to have made the acquaintance of Addison and the little senate which met in Button's coffee house. His poem the 'Messiah' appeared in the 'Spectator' in May 1712; the first draft of 'The Rape of the Lock' in a poetical miscellany in the same year, and Addison's request, in 1713, that he compose a prologue for the tragedy of 'Cato' set the final stamp upon his rank as a poet.
Pope's friendly relations with Addison and his circle were not, however, long continued. In the year 1713 he gradually drew away from them and came under the influence of Swift, then at the height of his power in political and social life. Swift introduced him to the brilliant Tories, politicians and lovers of letters, Harley, Bolingbroke, and Atterbury, who were then at the head of affairs. Pope's new friends seem to have treated him with a deference which he had never experienced before, and which bound him to them in unbroken affection. Harley used to regret