The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope, vol 1 | Page 3

centos, with that of such genuine, although faulty poems, as
Keat's "Endymion," Shelley's "Queen Mab," and Wordsworth's
"Lyrical Ballads." Two years later, (in 1711), a far better and more
characteristic production from his pen was ushered anonymously into
the world. This was the "Essay on Criticism," a work which he had first
written in prose, and which discovers a ripeness of judgment, a
clearness of thought, a condensation of style, and a command over the
information he possesses, worthy of any age in life, and almost of any
mind in time. It serves, indeed, to shew what Pope's true forte was.

That lay not so much in poetry, as in the knowledge of its principles
and laws,--not so much in creation, as in criticism. He was no Homer or
Shakspeare; but he might have been nearly as acute a judge of poetry as
Aristotle, and nearly as eloquent an expounder of the rules of art and
the glories of genius as Longinus.
In the same year, Pope printed "The Rape of the Lock," in a volume of
Miscellanies. Lord Petre had, much in the way described by the poet,
stolen a lock of Miss Belle Fermor's hair,--a feat which led to an
estrangement between the families. Pope set himself to reconcile them
by this beautiful poem,--a poem which has embalmed at once the
quarrel and the reconciliation to all future time. In its first version, the
machinery was awanting, the "lock" was a desert, the "rape" a natural
event,--the small infantry of sylphs and gnomes were slumbering
uncreated in the poet's mind; but in the next edition he contrived to
introduce them in a manner so easy and so exquisite, as to remind you
of the variations which occur in dreams, where one wonder seems
softly to slide into the bosom of another, and where beautiful and
fantastic fancies grow suddenly out of realities, like the bud from the
bough, or the fairy-seeming wing of the summer-cloud from the stern
azure of the heavens.
A little after this, Pope became acquainted with a far greater, better, and
truer man than himself, Joseph Addison. Warburton, and others, have
sadly misrepresented the connexion between these two famous wits, as
well as their relative intellectual positions. Addison was a more
amiable and childlike person than Pope. He had much more, too, of the
Christian. He was not so elaborately polished and furbished as the
author of "The Rape of the Lock;" but he had, naturally, a finer and
richer genius. Pope found early occasion for imagining Addison his
disguised enemy. He gave him a hint of his intention to introduce the
machinery into "The Rape of the Lock." Of this, Addison disapproved,
and said it was a delicious little thing already--merum sal. This, Pope,
and some of his friends, have attributed to jealousy; but it is obvious
that Addison could not foresee the success with which the machinery
was to be managed, and did foresee the difficulties connected with
tinkering such an exquisite production. We may allude here to the

circumstances which, at a later date, produced an estrangement between
these celebrated men. When Tickell, Addison's friend, published the
first book of the "Iliad," in opposition to Pope's version, Addison gave
it the preference. This moved Pope's indignation, and led him to assert
that it was Addison's own composition. In this conjecture he was
supported by Edward Young, who had known Tickell long and
intimately, and had never heard of him having written at college, as
was averred, this translation. It is now, however, we believe, certain,
from the MS. which still exists, that Tickell was the real author. A
coldness, from this date, began between Pope and Addison. An attempt
to reconcile them only made matters worse; and at last the breach was
rendered irremediable by Pope's writing the famous character of his
rival, afterwards inserted in the Prologue to the Satires,--a portrait
drawn with the perfection of polished malice and bitter sarcasm, but
which seems more a caricature than a likeness. Whatever Addison's
faults, his conduct to Pope did not deserve such a return. The whole
passage is only one of those painful incidents which disgrace the
history of letters, and prove how much spleen, ingratitude, and
baseness often co-exist with the highest parts. The words of Pope are as
true now as ever they were--"the life of a wit is a warfare upon earth;"
and a warfare in which poisoned missiles and every variety of
falsehood are still common. We may also here mention, that while the
friendship of Pope and Addison lasted, the former contributed the
well-known prologue to the latter's "Cato."
One of Pope's most intimate friends in his early days was Henry
Cromwell--a distant relative of the great Oliver--a gentleman of fortune,
gallantry, and literary taste, who became his