The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope, vol 1 | Page 4

agreeable and fascinating,
but somewhat dangerous, companion. He is supposed to have initiated
Pope into some of the fashionable follies of the town. At this time,
Pope's popularity roused one of his most formidable foes against him.
This was that Cobbett of criticism, old John Dennis,--a man of strong
natural powers, much learning, and a rich, coarse vein of humour; but
irascible, vindictive, vain, and capricious. Pope had provoked him by
an attack in his "Essay on Criticism," and the savage old man revenged
himself by a running fire of fierce diatribes against that "Essay" and
"The Rape of the Lock." Pope waited till Dennis had committed

himself by a powerful but furious assault on Addison's "Cato" (most of
which Johnson has preserved in his Life of Pope); and then, partly to
court Addison, and partly to indulge his spleen at the critic, wrote a
prose satire, entitled, "The Narrative of Dr Robert Norris on the Frenzy
of J.D." In this, however, he overshot the mark; and Addison signified
to him that he was displeased with the spirit of his narrative,--an
intimation which Pope keenly resented. This scornful dog would not eat
the dirty pudding that was graciously flung to him; and Pope found that,
without having conciliated Addison, he had made Dennis's furnace of
hate against himself seven times hotter than before.
In 1712 appeared "The Messiah," "The Dying Christian to his Soul,"
"The Temple of Fame," and the "Elegy on the Memory of an
Unfortunate Lady." Her story is still involved in mystery. Her name is
said to have been Wainsbury. She was attached to a lover above her
degree,--some say to the Duke of Berry, whom she had met in her early
youth in France. In despair of obtaining her desire, she hanged herself.
It is curious, if true, that she was as deformed in person as Pope himself.
Her family seems to have been noble. In 1713, he published "Windsor
Forest," an "Ode on St Cecilia's Day," and several papers in the
Guardian--one of them being an exquisitely ironical paper, comparing
Phillip's pastorals with his own, and affecting to give them the
preference--the extracts being so selected as to damage his rival's
claims. This year, also, he wrote, although he did not publish, his fine
epistle to Jervas, the painter. Pope was passionately fond of the art of
painting, and practised it a good deal under Jervas's instructions,
although he did not reach great proficiency. The prodigy has yet to be
born who combines the characters of a great painter and a great poet.
About this time, Pope commenced preparations for the great work of
translating Homer; and subscription-papers, accordingly, were issued.
Dean Swift was now in England, and took a deep interest in the success
of this undertaking, recommending it in coffee-houses, and introducing
the subject and Pope's name to the leading Tories. Pope met the Dean
for the first time in Berkshire, where, in one of his fits of savage disgust
at the conflicting parties of the period, he had retired to the house of a
clergyman, and an intimacy commenced which was only terminated by

death. We have often regretted that Pope had not selected some author
more suitable to his genius than Homer. Horace or Lucretius, or even
Ovid, would have been more congenial. His imitations of Horace shew
us what he might have made of a complete translation. What a brilliant
thing a version of Lucretius, in the style of the "Essay on Man," would
have been! And his "Rape of the Lock" proves that he had considerable
sympathy with the elaborate fancy, although not with the meretricious
graces of Ovid. But with Homer, the severely grand, the simple, the
warlike, the lover and painter of all Nature's old original forms--the
ocean, the mountains, and the stars--what thorough sympathy could a
man have who never saw a real mountain or a battle, and whose
enthusiasm for scenery was confined to purling brooks, trim gardens,
artificial grottos, and the shades of Windsor Forest? Accordingly, his
Homer, although a beautiful and sparkling poem, is not a satisfactory
translation of the "Iliad," and still less of the "Odyssey." He has trailed
along the naked lances of the Homeric lines so many flowers and
leaves that you can hardly recognise them, and feel that their point is
deadened and their power gone. This at least is our opinion; although
many to this day continue to admire these translations, and have even
said that if they are not Homer, they are something better.
The "Iliad" took him six years, and was a work which cost him much
anxiety as well as labour, the more as his scholarship was far from
profound. He was assisted in the undertaking by Parnell (who wrote the
Life of Homer), by Broome, Jortin,