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107-543: As a term for the combination of the very high with the very low, bathos was introduced by Alexander Pope in his essay Peri Bathous, Or the Art of Sinking in Poetry (1727). On the one hand, Pope's work is a parody in prose of Longinus 's Peri Hupsous ( On the Sublime ), in that he imitates Longinus's system for the purpose of ridiculing contemporary poets, but, on the other, it is

214-439: A Nose or an Eye, have with Felicity copied a Small-Pox, or been admirable at a Toad or a Red-Herring. And seldom are we without Genius's for Still Life, which they can work up and stiffen with incredible Accuracy . ("Peri Bathous" vi). In chapters X and XI, Pope explains the comic use of the tropes and figures of speech . Although Pope's manual of bad verse offers numerous methods for writing poorly, of all these ways to "sink",

321-557: A blast of wind, she rush'd away. Thus having pass'd the night in fruitless pain, I to my longing friends return again Dryden's translation is based on presumed authorial intent and smooth English. In line 790 the literal translation of haec ubi dicta dedit is "when she gave these words." But "she said" gets the point across, uses half the words, and makes for better English. A few lines later, with ter conatus ibi collo dare bracchia circum; ter frustra comprensa manus effugit imago , he alters

428-519: A blow Pope struck in an ongoing struggle against the "dunces." The nearest model for Pope's essay is the Treatise of the Sublime by Boileau of 1712. Pope admired Boileau, but one of Pope's literary adversaries, Leonard Welsted , had issued a "translation" of Longinus in 1726 that was merely a translation of Boileau. Because Welsted and Pope's other foes were championing this "sublime", Pope commented upon and countered their system with his Peri Bathos in

535-451: A child Pope survived once being trampled by a cow , but when he was 12 he began struggling with tuberculosis of the spine ( Pott disease ), which restricted his growth, so that he was only 4 feet 6 inches (1.37 metres) tall as an adult. He also suffered from crippling headaches. In the year 1709, Pope showcased his precocious metrical skill with the publication of Pastorals , his first major poems. They earned him instant fame. By

642-525: A committed admirer in George Saintsbury , and was a prominent figure in quotation books such as Bartlett's, but the next major poet to take an interest in Dryden was T. S. Eliot , who wrote that he was "the ancestor of nearly all that is best in the poetry of the eighteenth century", and that "we cannot fully enjoy or rightly estimate a hundred years of English poetry unless we fully enjoy Dryden." However, in

749-491: A concerted propaganda assault against Robert Walpole 's Whig ministry and the financial revolution it stabilised. Although Pope was a keen participant in the stock and money markets, he never missed a chance to satirise the personal, social and political effects of the new scheme of things. From The Rape of the Lock onwards, these satirical themes appear constantly in his work. In 1731, Pope published his "Epistle to Burlington ", on

856-402: A continuance of Pope's tradition – William Wordsworth found Pope's style too decadent to represent the human condition. George Gilfillan in an 1856 study called Pope's talent "a rose peering into the summer air, fine, rather than powerful". Pope's reputation revived in the 20th century. His work was full of references to the people and places of his time, which aided people's understanding of

963-419: A dialogue in which four characters—each based on a prominent contemporary, with Dryden himself as 'Neander'—debate the merits of classical, French and English drama. The greater part of his critical works introduce problems which he is eager to discuss, and show the work of a writer of independent mind who feels strongly about his own ideas, ideas which demonstrate the breadth of his reading. He felt strongly about

1070-615: A grandly rising thought that punctures itself: Pope offers one "Master of a Show in Smithfield, who wrote in large Letters, over the Picture of his Elephant: "This is the greatest Elephant in the World, except Himself." Several decades before Pope coined the term, John Dryden had described one of the breath-taking and magically extravagant settings for his Restoration spectacular , Albion and Albanius (1684–85): "The cave of Proteus rises out of

1177-709: A message from the ghost of his wife, Creusa. iamque vale et nati serva communis amorem. ' haec ubi dicta dedit, lacrimantem et multa volentem dicere deseruit, tenuisque recessit in auras. ter conatus ibi collo dare bracchia circum; ter frustra comprensa manus effugit imago, par levibus ventis volucrique simillima somno. sic demum socios consumpta nocte reviso Dryden translates it like this: I trust our common issue to your care.' She said, and gliding pass'd unseen in air. I strove to speak: but horror tied my tongue; And thrice about her neck my arms I flung, And, thrice deceiv'd, on vain embraces hung. Light as an empty dream at break of day, Or as

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1284-589: A scathing pamphlet called Shakespeare Restored , which catalogued the errors in Pope's work and suggested several revisions to the text. This enraged Pope, wherefore Theobald became the main target of Pope's Dunciad . The second edition of Pope's Shakespeare appeared in 1728. Apart from some minor revisions to the preface, it seems that Pope had little to do with it. Most later 18th-century editors of Shakespeare dismissed Pope's creatively motivated approach to textual criticism. Pope's preface continued to be highly rated. It

1391-415: A school for the children of the poor of the town. This became John Dryden's School, later The Orange School. Dryden was the dominant literary figure and influence of his age. He established the heroic couplet as a standard form of English poetry by writing successful satires, religious pieces, fables, epigrams, compliments, prologues, and plays with it; he also introduced the alexandrine and triplet into

1498-490: A small estate at Popeswood , in Binfield , Berkshire , close to the royal Windsor Forest . This was due to strong anti-Catholic sentiment and a statute preventing " Papists " from living within 10 miles (16 km) of London or Westminster. Pope would later describe the countryside around the house in his poem Windsor Forest . Pope's formal education ended at this time, and from then on, he mostly educated himself by reading

1605-615: A son and heir to the Catholic King and Queen on 10 June 1688. When, later in the same year, James II was deposed in the Glorious Revolution , Dryden's refusal to take the oaths of allegiance to the new monarchs, William and Mary , left him out of favour at court. Thomas Shadwell succeeded him as Poet Laureate, and he was forced to give up his public offices and live by the proceeds of his pen. Dryden translated works by Horace , Juvenal , Ovid , Lucretius , and Theocritus ,

1712-512: A task which he found far more satisfying than writing for the stage. In 1694 he began work on what would be his most ambitious and defining work as translator, The Works of Virgil (1697), which was published by subscription . The publication of the translation of Virgil was a national event and brought Dryden the sum of £1,400. Dryden translated the Aeneid into couplets , turning Virgil's almost 10,000 lines into 13,700 lines; Joseph Addison wrote

1819-489: A translation of the Iliad . The work would be available by subscription , with one volume appearing every year over six years. Pope secured a revolutionary deal with the publisher Bernard Lintot, which earned him 200 guineas (£210) a volume, a vast sum at the time. His Iliad translation appeared between 1715 and 1720. It was acclaimed by Samuel Johnson as "a performance which no age or nation could hope to equal". Conversely,

1926-455: A trivial context, like tea-towels with prints of DaVinci 's Last Supper on them or hand guns that are actually cigarette lighters) express bathos in the concrete arts. A tolerant but detached enjoyment of the aesthetic characteristics that are inherent in naïve, unconscious and honest bathos is an element of the camp sensibility , as first analyzed by Susan Sontag , in a 1964 essay "Notes on camp". Bathos as Pope described it may be found in

2033-456: A villa at Twickenham , where he created his now-famous grotto and gardens. The serendipitous discovery of a spring during the excavation of the subterranean retreat enabled it to be filled with the relaxing sound of trickling water, which would quietly echo around the chambers. Pope was said to have remarked, "Were it to have nymphs as well – it would be complete in everything." Although the house and gardens have long since been demolished, much of

2140-438: A wholly original poem that reviews his own literary career and includes famous portraits of Lord Hervey (" Sporus "), Thomas Hay, 9th Earl of Kinnoull ("Balbus") and Addison ("Atticus"). In 1738 came "The Universal Prayer". Among the younger poets whose work Pope admired was Joseph Thurston . After 1738, Pope himself wrote little. He toyed with the idea of composing a patriotic epic in blank verse called Brutus , but only

2247-462: Is believed to be the first person to assert that English sentences should not end in prepositions because Latin sentences cannot end in prepositions. Dryden created the proscription against preposition stranding in 1672 when he objected to Ben Jonson 's 1611 phrase, 'The bodies that those souls were frighted from.' However, he did not provide the rationale for his preference. Dryden often translated his writing into Latin, to check whether his writing

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2354-467: Is believed to have originated in Dryden's 1686 poem The Hind and the Panther , referring to the throne of God as a "blaze of glory that forbids the sight." What Dryden achieved in his poetry was neither the emotional excitement of the early nineteenth-century romantics nor the intellectual complexities of the metaphysicals . His subject matter was often factual, and he aimed at expressing his thoughts in

2461-526: Is false. He had been gay [happy], but left that way of life upon his acquaintance with Mrs. B." In May 1709, Pope's Pastorals was published in the sixth part of bookseller Jacob Tonson 's Poetical Miscellanies . This earned Pope instant fame and was followed by An Essay on Criticism , published in May 1711, which was equally well received. Around 1711, Pope made friends with Tory writers Jonathan Swift , Thomas Parnell and John Arbuthnot , who together formed

2568-479: Is for the passions; for (these) are begotten in the soul by showing the objects out of their true proportion.... A man is to be cheated into passion, but to be reasoned into truth." While Dryden had many admirers, he also had his share of critics, Mark Van Doren among them. Van Doren complained that in translating Virgil's Aeneid , Dryden had added "a fund of phrases with which he could expand any passage that seemed to him curt." Dryden did not feel such expansion

2675-438: Is likely that he received his first education. In 1644 he was sent to Westminster School as a King's Scholar where his headmaster was Richard Busby , a charismatic teacher and severe disciplinarian. Having been re-founded by Elizabeth I , Westminster during this period embraced a very different religious and political spirit encouraging royalism and high Anglicanism . Whatever Dryden's response to this was, he clearly respected

2782-436: Is so pathetic as to be humorous. When artists consciously mix the very serious with the very trivial, the effect is of surreal humour and the absurd . However, when an artist is unconscious of the juxtaposition (e.g., when a film maker means for a man in a gorilla suit with a diving helmet to be frightening), the result is bathos. Arguably, some forms of kitsch (notably the replication of serious or sublime subjects in

2889-515: Is tempered, however, by a genuine, almost voyeuristic interest in the "beau-monde" (fashionable world) of 18th-century society. The revised, extended version of the poem focuses more clearly on its true subject: the onset of acquisitive individualism and a society of conspicuous consumers. In the poem, purchased artefacts displace human agency and "trivial things" come to dominate. Though The Dunciad first appeared anonymously in Dublin , its authorship

2996-689: The Earl of Rochester , a notorious womaniser. Rochester responded by hiring thugs who attacked Dryden whilst walking back from Will's Coffee House (a popular London coffee house where the Wits gathered to gossip, drink and conduct their business) to his house on Gerrard Street. At around 8 pm on 18 December 1679, Dryden was attacked in Rose Alley behind the Lamb & Flag pub , near his home in Covent Garden . Dryden survived

3103-618: The Restoration of the monarchy and the return of Charles II with Astraea Redux , an authentic royalist panegyric . In this work the Interregnum is illustrated as a time of chaos, and Charles is seen as the restorer of peace and order. After the Restoration, as Dryden quickly established himself as the leading poet and literary critic of his day, he transferred his allegiances to the new government. Along with Astraea Redux , Dryden welcomed

3210-450: The Swift - Pope - Gay - Arbuthnot Miscellanies. Whereas Boileau had offered a detailed discussion of all the ways in which poetry could ascend or be "awe-inspiring", Pope offers a lengthy schematic of the ways in which authors might "sink" in poetry, satirizing the very men who were allied with Ambrose Philips . Pope and Philips had been adversaries since the publication of Pope's Odes, and

3317-449: The established Church of England , banning Catholics from teaching, attending a university, voting, and holding public office on penalty of perpetual imprisonment. Pope was taught to read by his aunt and attended Twyford School circa 1698. He also attended two Roman Catholic schools in London. Such schools, though still illegal, were tolerated in some areas. In 1700, his family moved to

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3424-682: The "Great Chain of Being", at a middle stage between the angels and the beasts of the world. Accomplish this and we potentially could lead happy and virtuous lives. The poem is an affirmative statement of faith: life seems chaotic and confusing to man in the centre of it, but according to Pope it is truly divinely ordered. In Pope's world, God exists and is what he centres the Universe around as an ordered structure. The limited intelligence of man can only take in tiny portions of this order and experience only partial truths, hence man must rely on hope, which then leads to faith. Man must be aware of his existence in

3531-448: The (prose) prefaces for each book, and William Congreve checked the translation against the Latin original. His final translations appeared in the volume Fables Ancient and Modern (1700), a series of episodes from Homer , Ovid , and Boccaccio , as well as modernised adaptations from Geoffrey Chaucer interspersed with Dryden's own poems. As a translator, he made great literary works in

3638-511: The Addition, I also hope, are easily deduc'd from Virgil's Sense. They will seem (at least I have the Vanity to think so), not struck into him, but growing out of him. (5:529) In a similar vein, Dryden writes in his Preface to the translation anthology Sylvae : Where I have taken away some of [the original authors'] Expressions, and cut them shorter, it may possibly be on this consideration, that what

3745-518: The Lock ), was twenty years older than the poet and had made many acquaintances in the London literary world. He introduced the young Pope to the ageing playwright William Wycherley and to William Walsh , a minor poet, who helped Pope revise his first major work, The Pastorals . There, he met the Blount sisters, Teresa and Martha (Patty) , in 1707. He remained close friends with Patty until his death, but his friendship with Teresa ended in 1722. From

3852-492: The Lock , The Dunciad , and An Essay on Criticism , and for his translations of Homer . Pope is often quoted in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations , some of his verses having entered common parlance (e.g. " damning with faint praise " or " to err is human; to forgive, divine "). Alexander Pope was born in London on 21 May 1688 during the year of the Glorious Revolution . His father (Alexander Pope, 1646–1717)

3959-568: The Manner of Sinking in Sublime Paintings inscribed to Dealers in Dark Pictures , depicting Father Time lying exhausted in a scene of destruction, parodying the fashion at that time for " sublime " works of art, and satirising criticisms made of Hogarth's own works. It may also be seen as a vanitas or memento mori , foreshadowing Hogarth's death six months later. Headed Tail Piece , it

4066-488: The Memory of an Unfortunate Lady and the famous proto-romantic poem Eloisa to Abelard . Though Pope never married, about this time he became strongly attached to Lady M. Montagu, whom he indirectly referenced in his popular Eloisa to Abelard , and to Martha Blount, with whom his friendship continued through his life. As a satirist , Pope made his share of enemies as critics, politicians and certain other prominent figures felt

4173-426: The Sublime and Beautiful (1756). One example of Pope's style and satire shows in his description of sinking in painting. In the commonplace Academic hierarchic ranking of pictorial genres , still life ranked the lowest. However, Pope describes how it might fall and, with the single word "stiffen", evokes the unnatural deadness that is a mark of failure even in this "low" genre : Many Painters who could never hit

4280-592: The Universe and what he brings to it in terms of riches, power and fame. Pope proclaims that man's duty is to strive to be good, regardless of other situations. FATHER of all! in every age, In every clime adored, By saint, by savage, and by sage, Jehovah , Jove , or Lord! If I am right, thy grace impart Still in the right to stay; If I am wrong, O, teach my heart To find that better way! Save me alike from foolish pride, Or impious discontent, At aught thy wisdom has denied, Or aught thy goodness lent. Teach me to feel another’s woe, To hide

4387-454: The Universe: no matter how imperfect, complex, inscrutable and disturbing the Universe may be, it functions in a rational fashion according to natural laws, so that the Universe as a whole is a perfect work of God, though to humans it appears to be evil and imperfect in many ways. Pope ascribes this to our limited mindset and intellectual capacity. He argues that humans must accept their position in

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4494-508: The abdication of James II . One of these banned them from living within ten miles of London, another from attending public school or university. So except for a few spurious Catholic schools , Pope was largely self-educated . He was taught to read by his aunt and became a book lover, reading in French, Italian, Latin and Greek and discovering Homer at the age of six. In 1700, when only twelve years of age, he wrote his poem Ode on Solitude . As

4601-425: The age of 12 he suffered numerous health problems, including Pott disease , a form of tuberculosis that affects the spine, which deformed his body and stunted his growth, leaving him with a severe hunchback. His tuberculosis infection caused other health problems including respiratory difficulties, high fevers, inflamed eyes and abdominal pain. He grew to a height of only 4 feet 6 inches (1.37 metres). Pope

4708-437: The age of 23, he had written An Essay on Criticism , released in 1711. A kind of poetic manifesto in the vein of Horace 's Ars Poetica , it met with enthusiastic attention and won Pope a wider circle of prominent friends, notably Joseph Addison and Richard Steele , who had recently begun to collaborate on the influential The Spectator . The critic John Dennis , having found an ironic and veiled portrait of himself,

4815-468: The attack, offering £50 for the identity of the thugs placed in the London Gazette , and a Royal Pardon if one of them would confess. No one claimed the reward. Dryden's greatest achievements were in satiric verse: the mock-heroic Mac Flecknoe , a more personal product of his laureate years, was a lampoon circulated in manuscript and an attack on the playwright Thomas Shadwell . Dryden's main goal in

4922-472: The charge was untrue, it did much damage to Pope. There has been some speculation on a feud between Pope and Thomas Hearne , due in part to the character of Wormius in The Dunciad , who is seemingly based on Hearne. An Essay on Man is a philosophical poem in heroic couplets published between 1732 and 1734. Pope meant it as the centrepiece of a proposed system of ethics to be put forth in poetic form. It

5029-462: The classical scholar Richard Bentley wrote: "It is a pretty poem, Mr. Pope, but you must not call it Homer." Encouraged by the success of the Iliad , Bernard Lintot published Pope's five-volume translation of Homer's Odyssey in 1725–1726. For this Pope collaborated with William Broome and Elijah Fenton : Broome translated eight books (2, 6, 8, 11, 12, 16, 18, 23), Fenton four (1, 4, 19, 20) and Pope

5136-524: The consent of the parents is noted on the licence, although Lady Elizabeth was then about twenty-five. The couple met after 1660, when Dryden began lodging in London with her brother, Sir Robert Howard, son of the earl of Berkshire. The marriage lasted until his death, but there is little evidence about how they lived as a couple. A small estate in Wiltshire was settled upon them by her father. The lady's intellect and temper were apparently not good; her husband

5243-417: The dominant poetic form of the 18th century. Alexander Pope was heavily influenced by Dryden and often borrowed from him; other writers were equally influenced by Dryden and Pope. Pope famously praised Dryden's versification in his imitation of Horace 's Epistle II.i: "Dryden taught to join / The varying pause, the full resounding line, / The long majestic march, and energy divine." Samuel Johnson summed up

5350-465: The fault I see; That mercy I to others show, That mercy show to me. Mean though I am, not wholly so, Since quickened by thy breath; O, lead me wheresoe’er I go, Through this day’s life or death! To thee, whose temple is all space, Whose altar, earth, sea, skies! One chorus let all Being raise! All Nature’s incense rise! Pope, "The Universal Prayer" The Imitations of Horace that followed (1733–1738) were written in

5457-457: The form. In his poems, translations, and criticism, he established a poetic diction appropriate to the heroic couplet— Auden referred to him as "the master of the middle style " —that was a model for his contemporaries and for much of the 18th century. The considerable loss felt by the English literary community at his death was evident in the elegies written about him. Dryden's heroic couplet became

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5564-657: The fortunes of the Tories , and Pope's friend Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke , fled to France. This was added to by the Impeachment of the former Tory Chief Minister Lord Oxford . Pope lived in his parents' house in Mawson Row, Chiswick , between 1716 and 1719; the red-brick building is now the Mawson Arms , commemorating him with a blue plaque . The money made from his translation of Homer allowed Pope to move in 1719 to

5671-571: The general attitude with his remark that "the veneration with which his name is pronounced by every cultivator of English literature, is paid to him as he refined the language, improved the sentiments, and tuned the numbers of English poetry." His poems were very widely read, and are often quoted, for instance, in Henry Fielding 's Tom Jones and Johnson's essays. Johnson also noted, however, that "He is, therefore, with all his variety of excellence, not often pathetic; and had so little sensibility of

5778-403: The grotto survives beneath Radnor House Independent Co-educational School. The grotto has been restored and will open to the public for 30 weekends a year from 2023 under the auspices of Pope's Grotto Preservation Trust. An Essay on Criticism was first published anonymously on 15 May 1711. Pope began writing the poem early in his career and took about three years to finish it. At the time

5885-525: The headmaster and would later send two of his sons to school at Westminster. As a humanist public school, Westminster maintained a curriculum which trained pupils in the art of rhetoric and the presentation of arguments for both sides of a given issue. This is a skill which would remain with Dryden and influence his later writing and thinking, as much of it displays these dialectical patterns. The Westminster curriculum included weekly translation assignments which developed Dryden's capacity for assimilation. This

5992-635: The hostility of its victims and their sympathizers, who pursued him implacably from then on with a few damaging truths and a host of slanders and lies." According to his half-sister Magdalen Rackett, some of Pope's targets were so enraged by The Dunciad that they threatened him physically. "My brother does not seem to know what fear is," she told Joseph Spence , explaining that Pope loved to walk alone, so went accompanied by his Great Dane Bounce, and for some time carried pistols in his pocket. This first Dunciad , along with John Gay 's The Beggar's Opera and Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels , joined in

6099-452: The literal translation "Thrice trying to give arms around her neck; thrice the image grasped in vain fled the hands," in order to fit it into the metre and the emotion of the scene. In his own words, The way I have taken, is not so streight as Metaphrase, nor so loose as Paraphrase: Some things too I have omitted, and sometimes added of my own. Yet the omissions I hope, are but of Circumstances, and such as wou'd have no grace in English; and

6206-475: The married state but also celebrations of the same. Thus, little is known of the intimate side of his marriage. Lady Elizabeth bore three sons, one of whom (Erasmus Henry) became a Roman Catholic priest. With the reopening of the theatres in 1660 after the Puritan ban , Dryden began writing plays. His first play The Wild Gallant appeared in 1663, and was not successful, but was still promising, and from 1668 on he

6313-476: The method that is most remembered now is the act of combining very serious matters with very trivial ones. The radical juxtaposition of the serious with the frivolous does two things. First, it violates decorum , or the fittingness of subject, and, second, it creates humor with an unexpected and improper juxtaposition. Since Pope's day, the term "bathos", perhaps because of confusion with " pathos ", has been used for art forms, and sometimes events, where something

6420-420: The moral qualities and virtues inherent in an ideal critic, whom Pope claims is also the ideal man. Pope's most famous poem is The Rape of the Lock , first published in 1712, with a revised version in 1714. A mock-epic , it satirises a high-society quarrel between Arabella Fermor (the "Belinda" of the poem) and Lord Petre , who had snipped a lock of hair from her head without permission. The satirical style

6527-414: The most precise and concentrated manner. Although he uses formal structures such as heroic couplets, he tried to recreate the natural rhythm of speech, and he knew that different subjects need different kinds of verse. In his preface to Religio Laici he says that "the expressions of a poem designed purely for instruction ought to be plain and natural, yet majestic... The florid, elevated and figurative way

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6634-666: The nation rather than the self, and the Poet Laureate (as he would later become) is obliged to write a certain number of these per annum. In November 1662, Dryden was proposed for membership in the Royal Society , and he was elected an early fellow. However, Dryden was inactive in Society affairs and in 1666 was expelled for non-payment of his dues. On 1 December 1663, Dryden married the royalist sister of Sir Robert Howard —Lady Elizabeth. Dryden's works occasionally contain outbursts against

6741-462: The new regime with two more panegyrics: To His Sacred Majesty: A Panegyric on his Coronation (1662) and To My Lord Chancellor (1662). These poems suggest that Dryden was looking to court a possible patron, but he was to instead make a living in writing for publishers, not for the aristocracy, and thus ultimately for the reading public. These, and his other nondramatic poems, are occasional—that is, they celebrate public events. Thus they are written for

6848-976: The older languages available to readers of English. Dryden died on 12 May 1700, and was initially buried in St. Anne's cemetery in Soho, before being exhumed and reburied in Westminster Abbey ten days later. He was the subject of poetic eulogies, such as Luctus Brittannici: or the Tears of the British Muses; for the Death of John Dryden, Esq. (London, 1700), and The Nine Muses . A Royal Society of Arts blue plaque commemorates Dryden at 43 Gerrard Street in London's Chinatown . He lived at 137 Long Acre from 1682 to 1686 and at 43 Gerrard Street from 1686 until his death. In his will, he left The George Inn at Northampton to trustees, to form

6955-425: The opening lines survive. His major work in those years was to revise and expand his masterpiece, The Dunciad . Book Four appeared in 1742 and a full revision of the whole poem the following year. Here Pope replaced the "hero" Lewis Theobald with the Poet Laureate , Colley Cibber as "king of dunces". However, the real focus of the revised poem is Walpole and his works. By now Pope's health, which had never been good,

7062-633: The originals. However, several of Wordsworth's contemporaries, such as George Crabbe , Lord Byron , and Walter Scott (who edited Dryden's works), were still keen admirers of Dryden. Besides, Wordsworth did admire many of Dryden's poems, and his famous "Intimations of Immortality" ode owes something stylistically to Dryden's " Alexander's Feast ". John Keats admired the Fables , and imitated them in his poem Lamia . Later 19th-century writers had little use for verse satire, Pope, or Dryden; Matthew Arnold famously dismissed them as "classics of our prose". He did have

7169-646: The past. The post-war period stressed the power of Pope's poetry, recognising that Pope's immersion in Christian and Biblical culture lent depth to his poetry. For example, Maynard Mack, in the late 20th-century, argued that Pope's moral vision demanded as much respect as his technical excellence. Between 1953 and 1967 the definitive Twickenham edition of Pope's poems appeared in ten volumes, including an index volume. John Dryden John Dryden ( / ˈ d r aɪ d ən / ; 19 August [ O.S. 9 August] 1631 – 12 May [ O.S. 1 May] 1700)

7276-414: The poem was published, its heroic couplet style was quite a new poetic form and Pope's work an ambitious attempt to identify and refine his own positions as a poet and critic. It was said to be a response to an ongoing debate on the question of whether poetry should be natural, or written according to predetermined artificial rules inherited from the classical past. The "essay" begins with a discussion of

7383-412: The popular Augustan form of an "imitation" of a classical poet, not so much a translation of his works as an updating with contemporary references. Pope used the model of Horace to satirise life under George II , especially what he saw as the widespread corruption tainting the country under Walpole's influence and the poor quality of the court's artistic taste. Pope added as an introduction to Imitations

7490-454: The posts of Poet Laureate (1668) and historiographer royal (1670). When the Great Plague of London closed the theatres in 1665, Dryden retreated to Wiltshire where he wrote Of Dramatick Poesie (1668), arguably the best of his unsystematic prefaces and essays. Dryden constantly defended his own literary practice, and Of Dramatick Poesie , the longest of his critical works, takes the form of

7597-453: The power of effusions purely natural, that he did not esteem them in others. Simplicity gave him no pleasure." Readers in the first half of the 18th century did not mind this too much, but later generations considered Dryden's absence of sensibility a fault. One of the first attacks on Dryden's reputation was by William Wordsworth , who complained that Dryden's descriptions of natural objects in his translations from Virgil were much inferior to

7704-427: The relation of the poet to tradition and the creative process, and his best heroic play Aureng-zebe (1675) has a prologue which denounces the use of rhyme in serious drama. His play All for Love (1678) was written in blank verse, and was to immediately follow Aureng-Zebe . Dryden's poem "An Essay upon Satire" contained a number of attacks on King Charles II , his mistresses and courtiers, but most pointedly on

7811-507: The religious poems Religio Laici (1682), written from the position of a member of the Church of England; his 1683 edition of Plutarch's Lives Translated From the Greek by Several Hands in which he introduced the word 'biography' to English readers; and The Hind and the Panther , (1687) which celebrates his conversion to Roman Catholicism . He wrote Britannia Rediviva celebrating the birth of

7918-457: The remaining twelve. Broome provided the annotations. Pope tried to conceal the extent of the collaboration, but the secret leaked out. It did some damage to Pope's reputation for a time, but not to his profits. Leslie Stephen considered Pope's portion of the Odyssey inferior to his version of the Iliad , given that Pope had put more effort into the earlier work – to which, in any case, his style

8025-529: The result of influence exercised on his behalf by his cousin the Lord Chamberlain, Sir Gilbert Pickering . At Cromwell's funeral on 23 November 1658 Dryden processed with the Puritan poets John Milton and Andrew Marvell . Shortly thereafter he published his first important poem, Heroic Stanzas (1659), a eulogy on Cromwell's death which is cautious and prudent in its emotional display. In 1660 Dryden celebrated

8132-456: The rivalry broke down along political lines. According to Pope, bathos can be most readily applicable to love making after two years of marriage which is clearly in binary opposition to the sublime but is no less political. Edmund Burke was believed to be particularly charmed by Pope's articulation of love after marriage, inspiring Burke's essay A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of

8239-423: The same essay, Eliot accused Dryden of having a "commonplace mind". Critical interest in Dryden has increased recently, but, as a relatively straightforward writer ( William Empson , another modern admirer of Dryden, compared his "flat" use of language with Donne 's interest in the "echoes and recesses of words" ), his work has not occasioned as much interest as Andrew Marvell 's, John Donne 's or Pope's. Dryden

8346-400: The same thing, when he suggested that the "self" is easy to lose and that the loss of "an arm, a leg, a dog, or a wife" would be more grievous. When intended, this is a form of satire or the literary figure of undercutting. When the context demands a lofty, serious, or grand interpretation, however, the effect is bathos. In 1764, William Hogarth published his last engraving, The Bathos, or

8453-457: The satirical Scriblerus Club . Its aim was to satirise ignorance and pedantry through the fictional scholar Martinus Scriblerus. He also made friends with Whig writers Joseph Addison and Richard Steele . In March 1713, Windsor Forest was published to great acclaim. During Pope's friendship with Joseph Addison, he contributed to Addison's play Cato , as well as writing for The Guardian and The Spectator . Around this time, he began

8560-488: The sea, it consists of several arches of rock work, adorned with mother of pearl, coral, and abundance of shells of various kinds. Through the arches is seen the sea, and parts of Dover pier ." Pope himself employed this type of figure intentionally for humor in his mock-heroic Rape of the Lock , where a lady would be upset at the death of a lover "or lapdog". Søren Kierkegaard , in The Sickness Unto Death , did

8667-455: The spectacle. In 1650 Dryden went up to Trinity College, Cambridge . Here he would have experienced a return to the religious and political ethos of his childhood: the Master of Trinity was a Puritan preacher by the name of Thomas Hill who had been a rector in Dryden's home village. Though there is little specific information on Dryden's undergraduate years, he would most certainly have followed

8774-488: The standard curriculum of classics, rhetoric, and mathematics. In 1654 he obtained his BA, graduating top of the list for Trinity that year. In June of the same year Dryden's father died, leaving him some land which generated a little income, but not enough to live on. Returning to London during the Protectorate , Dryden obtained work with Oliver Cromwell 's Secretary of State, John Thurloe . This appointment may have been

8881-460: The standard rules that govern poetry, by which a critic passes judgement. Pope comments on the classical authors who dealt with such standards and the authority he believed should be accredited to them. He discusses the laws to which a critic should adhere while analysing poetry, pointing out the important function critics perform in aiding poets with their works, as opposed to simply attacking them. The final section of An Essay on Criticism discusses

8988-418: The sting of his sharp-witted satires. Some were so virulent that Pope even carried pistols while walking his dog. In 1738 and thenceforth, Pope composed relatively little. He began having ideas for a patriotic epic in blank verse titled Brutus , but mainly revised and expanded his Dunciad . Book Four appeared in 1742; and a complete revision of the whole in the year that followed. At this time Lewis Theobald

9095-576: The subject of architecture, the first of four poems later grouped as the Moral Essays (1731–1735). The epistle ridicules the bad taste of the aristocrat "Timon". For example, the following are verses 99 and 100 of the Epistle: At Timon's Villa let us paſs a day, Where all cry out, "What ſums are thrown away!" Pope's foes claimed he was attacking the Duke of Chandos and his estate, Cannons . Though

9202-471: The work is to "satirize Shadwell, ostensibly for his offenses against literature but more immediately we may suppose for his habitual badgering of him on the stage and in print." It is not a belittling form of satire, but rather one which makes his object great in ways which are unexpected, transferring the ridiculous into poetry. This line of satire continued with Absalom and Achitophel (1681) and The Medal (1682). His other major works from this period are

9309-819: The work of translating the Iliad , which was a painstaking process – publication began in 1715 and did not end until 1720. In 1714 the political situation worsened with the death of Queen Anne and the disputed succession between the Hanoverians and the Jacobites , leading to the Jacobite rising of 1715 . Though Pope, as a Catholic, might have been expected to have supported the Jacobites because of his religious and political affiliations, according to Maynard Mack , "where Pope himself stood on these matters can probably never be confidently known". These events led to an immediate downturn in

9416-572: The works of classical writers such as the satirists Horace and Juvenal , the epic poets Homer and Virgil , as well as English authors such as Geoffrey Chaucer , William Shakespeare and John Dryden . He studied many languages, reading works by French, Italian, Latin, and Greek poets. After five years of study, Pope came into contact with figures from London literary society such as William Congreve , Samuel Garth and William Trumbull . At Binfield he made many important friends. One of them, John Caryll (the future dedicatee of The Rape of

9523-459: Was a fault, arguing that as Latin is a naturally concise language it cannot be duly represented by a comparable number of words in English. "He...recognized that Virgil 'had the advantage of a language wherein much may be comprehended in a little space' (5:329–30). The 'way to please the best Judges...is not to Translate a Poet literally; and Virgil least of any other' (5:329)." For example, take lines 789–795 of Book 2 when Aeneas sees and receives

9630-557: Was a piece that he sought to make into a larger work, but he did not live to complete it. It attempts to "vindicate the ways of God to Man", a variation on Milton's attempt in Paradise Lost to "justify the ways of God to Man" (1.26). It challenges as prideful an anthropocentric worldview. The poem is not solely Christian, however. It assumes that man has fallen and must seek his own salvation. Consisting of four epistles addressed to Lord Bolingbroke , it presents an idea of Pope's view of

9737-452: Was a successful linen merchant in the Strand , London . His mother, Edith (née Turner, 1643–1733), was the daughter of William Turner, Esquire, of York . Both parents were Catholics . His mother's sister, Christiana, was the wife of famous miniature painter Samuel Cooper . Pope's education was affected by the recently enacted Test Acts , a series of English penal laws that upheld the status of

9844-477: Was already removed from society as a Catholic, and his poor health alienated him further. Although he never married, he had many female friends to whom he wrote witty letters, including Lady Mary Wortley Montagu . It has been alleged that his lifelong friend Martha Blount was his lover. His friend William Cheselden said, according to Joseph Spence , "I could give a more particular account of Mr. Pope's health than perhaps any man. Cibber 's slander (of carnosity)

9951-479: Was also to be exhibited in his later works. His years at Westminster were not uneventful, and his first published poem, an elegy with a strong royalist feel on the death of his schoolmate Henry, Lord Hastings, from smallpox, alludes to the execution of King Charles I , which took place on 30 January 1649, very near the school where Busby had first prayed for the King and then locked in his schoolboys to prevent their attending

10058-584: Was an English poet, literary critic , translator, and playwright who in 1668 was appointed England's first Poet Laureate . He is seen as dominating the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the period came to be known in literary circles as the Age of Dryden. Romantic writer Sir Walter Scott called him "Glorious John". Dryden was born in the village rectory of Aldwincle near Thrapston in Northamptonshire, where his maternal grandfather

10165-619: Was beautiful in the Greek or Latin, would not appear so shining in the English; and where I have enlarg’d them, I desire the false Criticks would not always think that those thoughts are wholly mine, but that either they are secretly in the Poet, or may be fairly deduc’d from him; or at least, if both those considerations should fail, that my own is of a piece with his, and that if he were living, and an Englishman, they are such as he wou’d probably have written. On 1 December 1663, Dryden married Lady Elizabeth Howard (died 1714) at St Swithin's, London , and

10272-440: Was better suited. In this period, Pope was employed by the publisher Jacob Tonson to produce an opulent new edition of Shakespeare. When it appeared in 1725, it silently regularised Shakespeare's metre and rewrote his verse in several places. Pope also removed about 1,560 lines of Shakespeare's material, arguing that some appealed to him more than others. In 1726, the lawyer, poet and pantomime-deviser Lewis Theobald published

10379-425: Was concise and elegant, Latin being considered an elegant and long-lived language with which to compare; then Dryden translated his writing back to English according to Latin-grammar usage. As Latin does not have sentences ending in prepositions, Dryden may have applied Latin grammar to English, thus forming the rule of no sentence-ending prepositions, subsequently adopted by other writers. The phrase "blaze of glory"

10486-574: Was contracted to produce three plays a year for the King's Company in which he became a shareholder. During the 1660s and 1670s, theatrical writing was his main source of income. He led the way in Restoration comedy , his best-known work being Marriage à la Mode (1673), as well as heroic tragedy and regular tragedy, in which his greatest success was All for Love (1678). Dryden was never satisfied with his theatrical writings and frequently suggested that his talents were wasted on unworthy audiences. He thus

10593-622: Was failing. When told by his physician, on the morning of his death, that he was better, Pope replied: "Here am I, dying of a hundred good symptoms." He died at his villa surrounded by friends on 30 May 1744, about eleven o'clock at night. On the previous day, 29 May 1744, Pope had called for a priest and received the Last Rites of the Catholic Church. He was buried in the nave of St Mary's Church, Twickenham . Pope had been fascinated by Homer since childhood. In 1713, he announced plans to publish

10700-495: Was intended as the tailpiece for a bound edition of Hogarth's engravings. Alexander Pope Alexander Pope (21 May 1688 O.S. – 30 May 1744) was an English poet, translator, and satirist of the Enlightenment era who is considered one of the most prominent English poets of the early 18th century. An exponent of Augustan literature , Pope is best known for his satirical and discursive poetry including The Rape of

10807-501: Was making a bid for poetic fame off-stage. In 1667, around the same time his dramatic career began, he published Annus Mirabilis , a lengthy historical poem which described the English defeat of the Dutch naval fleet and the Great Fire of London in 1666. It was a modern epic in pentameter quatrains that established him as the preeminent poet of his generation, and was crucial in his attaining

10914-421: Was not in doubt. Pope pilloried a host of other "hacks", "scribblers" and "dunces" in addition to Theobald, and Maynard Mack has accordingly called its publication "in many ways the greatest act of folly in Pope's life". Though a masterpiece due to having become "one of the most challenging and distinctive works in the history of English poetry", writes Mack, "it bore bitter fruit. It brought the poet in his own time

11021-399: Was outraged by what he saw as the impudence of a younger author. Dennis hated Pope for the rest of his life, and save for a temporary reconciliation, dedicated his efforts to insulting him in print, to which Pope retaliated in kind, making Dennis the butt of much satire. A folio containing a collection of his poems appeared in 1717, along with two new ones about the passion of love: Verses to

11128-723: Was replaced with the Poet Laureate Colley Cibber as "king of dunces", but his real target remained the Whig politician Robert Walpole . By the mid-18th century, new fashions in poetry emerged. A decade after Pope's death, Joseph Warton claimed that Pope's style was not the most excellent form of the art. The Romantic movement that rose to prominence in early 19th-century England was more ambivalent about his work. Though Lord Byron identified Pope as one of his chief influences – believing his own scathing satire of contemporary English literature English Bards and Scotch Reviewers to be

11235-400: Was suggested that Shakespeare's texts were thoroughly contaminated by actors' interpolations and they would influence editors for most of the 18th century. Pope's poetic career testifies to an indomitable spirit despite disadvantages of health and circumstance. The poet and his family were Catholics and so fell subject to the prohibitive Test Acts , which hampered their co-religionists after

11342-417: Was the rector of All Saints . He was the eldest of fourteen children born to Erasmus Dryden and wife Mary Pickering, paternal grandson of Sir Erasmus Dryden, 1st Barone t (1553–1632), and wife Frances Wilkes, Puritan landowning gentry who supported the Puritan cause and Parliament. He was a second cousin once removed of Jonathan Swift . As a boy, Dryden lived in the nearby village of Titchmarsh , where it

11449-440: Was treated as an inferior by those of her social status. Both Dryden and his wife were warmly attached to their children. They had three sons: Charles (1666–1704), John (1668–1701), and Erasmus Henry (1669–1710). Lady Elizabeth Dryden survived her husband, but reportedly lost her wits after becoming a widow. Although some have historically claimed to be from the lineage of John Dryden, his three children, one of whom became

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