My first taking to imitating was not out of vanity, but humility: I saw how defective my own things were; and endeavoured to mend my manner, by copying good strokes from others.-P. I have often mentioned my great reading period to you. -In it, I went through all the best critics;* almost all the English, French, and Latin poets, of any name: the minor poets, Homer, and some of the greater Greek poets, in the original; and Tasso and Ariosto in translations-I even then liked Tasso better than Ariosto, as I do still; and Statius of all the Latin poets, by much, next to Virgil.-P. My epic was about two years in hand, (from thirteen to fifteen.)—Alcander was a prince, driven from his throne by Deucalion, father of Minos, and some other princes.-It was better planned than Blackmore's Prince Arthur; but as slavish an imitation of the ancients.-Alcander showed all the virtue of suffering, like Ulysses; and of courage, like Æneas, or Achilles.-Apollo, as the patron of Rhodes, was his great defender; and Cybele, as the patroness of Deucalion and Crete, his great enemy. She raises a storm against him in the first book, as Juno does against Æneas; and he is cast away and swims ashore, just as Ulysses does to the island of Phæacia.-P. Mr. Pope thought himself the better, in some respects, for not having had a regular education.-He, (as he observed in particular,) read originally for the sense; whereas we are taught, for so many years, to read only for words.-P. As I had a vast memory, and was sickly, and so full of application; had I chanced to have been of the religion of * This probably led him to writing his Essay on Criticism at that period.-Spence. the country I was born in, and bred at the usual places of education, I should, probably, have written something on that subject, and against the methods now used there; and, I believe, I might have been more useful that way than any other.-P. Bacon and Locke did not follow the common paths, but beat out new ones; and you see what good they have done : but much more is wanting.-Aldrich did a great deal of good too, in his way; there should be such people in the universities: but nothing can be done effectually, till the government takes it in hand to encourage and animate such a reformation.-P. About fifteen, I got acquainted with Mr. Walsh. He used to encourage me much, and used to tell me, that there was one way left of excelling: for though we had several great poets, we never had any one great poet that was correct; and he desired me to make that my study and aim.-P. [This, I suppose, first led Mr. Pope to turn his lines over and over again so often, which he continued to do till the last; and did it with surprising facility.-Spence.] I learned versification wholly from Dryden's works; who had improved it much beyond any of our former poets; and would, probably, have brought it to its perfection, had not he been unhappily obliged to write so often in haste.—P. Dryden always uses proper language; lively, natural, and fitted to the subject. It is scarce ever too high, or too low; never, perhaps, except in his plays.-P. Lord Dorset's things are all excellent in their way; for one should consider his pieces as a sort of epigrams: wit was his talent. -He and Lord Rochester should be considered as holiday-writers; as gentlemen that diverted themselves now and then with poetry, rather than as poets. -P. [This was said kindly of them; rather to excuse their defects, than to lessen their characters.-Spence.] Rochester has very bad versification sometimes.-P. [He instanced this from his translation of the tenth satire of Horace his full rhymes, &c.-Spence.] There is no one of our poets of that class, that was more judicious than Sir John Denham.-P. [At the end of his Cooper's Hill (edition of 1709), Mr. Pope had written the following note.- "This poem was first printed without the author's name, in 1643. In that edition a great number of verses are to be found, since entirely omitted;* and very many others, since corrected and improved. Some few, the author afterwards added: and in particular the four celebrated lines on the Thames, "O could I flow like thee," &c. *Though it might be a very useful lesson for a poet, to compare those two editions more exactly; and to consider at each alteration, how and why it was altered: it may not be amiss to subjoin here, the following list of alterations in the poem.-Spence. Edition, 1709.-Verse 12; more boundless, &c.-seven verses added instead of two bad ones.-V. 24-26; six verses only, instead of fourteen not near so good.-V. 30-38; were scattered among others far inferior.-V. 40; four verses omitted, in which he had compared Windsor Castle to a big-bellied woman!-V. 41-48; altered for the better.-V. 55-58; ditto, ditto.-V.7782; six verses, instead of eight inferior.-V. 86; two verses omitted. -V. 100—115; fifteen verses, instead of twenty-six far inferior. -V. 121; improved.-V. 127-132; altered much for the better. -V. 149-156; added.-V. 165, 166; altered.-V. 171—196; much omitted, and much added; of the Thames.-V. 217-237; much altered.-V. 241-300; much added of the chase.-V. 307 -310; simile added.—V. 319—322; altered for the better.— V. 327; six party lines omitted.-V. 342; party lines omitted. -V. 357; others, of the same kind, omitted in the close. all with admirable judgment; and the whole read together is a very strong proof of what Mr. Waller says: "Poets lose half the praise they should have got, It was our family priest (Banister) who taught me the figures, accidence, and first part of grammar. If it had not been for that, I should never have got any language: for I never learned anything at the little schools I was at afterwards; and never should have followed anything that I could not follow with pleasure.—I had learned very early to read, and delighted extremely in it; and taught myself to write, very early too, by copying from printed books; with which I used to divert myself, as other children do with scrawling out pictures.*-P. The Iliad took me up six years; and during that time, and particularly the first part of it, I was often under great pain and apprehension. Though I conquered the thoughts of it in the day, they would frighten me in the night.—I sometimes, still, even dream of being engaged in that translation; and got about half way through it: and being embarrassed and under dread of never completing it.-P. If I had not undertaken that work, I should certainly have writ an epic; and I should have sat down to it with * When Mr. Pope got into the way of teaching himself, and applied so close to it in the Forest; some of his first exercises were imitations of the stories that pleased him most in Ovid, or any other poet that he was reading. I have one of these original exercises now by me, in his own hand. It is the story of Acis and Galatea, from Ovid; and was translated when he was but fourteen years old. The title-page to this, (from his manner of learning to write,) is so like print, that it requires a good eye, and nice regard to distinguish it.-Spence. this advantage, that I had been nursed up in Homer and Virgil.-P. The following Epigram was made by Rowe, upon Phil. Frowd's uncle when he was writing a tragedy of Cinna: Frowd for his precious soul cares not a pin-a; For he can now do nothing else but Cin-na. "I thought Rowe had been too grave, to write such things?"-He!-why he would laugh all day long! he would do nothing else but laugh.—P. "The nobleman-look."-Yes, I know what you mean very well: that look which a nobleman should have; rather than what they have generally now.-P. The Duke of Buckingham (Sheffield) was a genteel man; and had a great deal the look you speak of.-Wycherley was a very genteel man; and had the nobleman-look as much as the Duke of Buckingham.-P. [He instanced it too in Lord Peterborough; Lord Bolingbroke; Lord Hinchinbroke; the Duke of Bolton, and two or three more.-Spence.] Mr. Pope has still a good memory; and that both of the sensible and local kind.—When I consulted him about the Hades of the ancients; he referred immediately to Pindar's second Olympic ode, Plutarch's Treatise de Iside et Osiride, the four places that relate to it in the Odyssey, (though this was so many years after he had done that translation,) Plato, Lucretius, and some others; and turned to the very passages in most of them, with a surprising readiness." Pray what is the Asphodil of Homer?"—Why I believe, if one was to say the truth, 'twas nothing else but that poor yellow flower that grows about our orchards and if so, the verse might thus be translated in English: |