THE AGE OF POPE

The earlier part of the eighteenth century (1700-1744) or the Augustan Age in
English literature is called the Age of Pope, because Pope was the dominating figure in
that period. Though there were a number of other important writers like Addison and
Swift, but Pope was the only one who devoted himself completely to literature.
Moreover, he represented in himself all the main characteristics of his age, and his
poetry served as a model to others.

(a) Poetry

It was the Classical school of poetry which dominated the poetry of the Age of
Pope. During this age the people were disgusted with the profligacy and frivolity of the
Restoration period, and they insisted upon those elementary decencies of life and
conduct which were looked at with contempt by the preceding generation. Moreover,
they had no sympathy for the fanaticism and religious zeal of the Puritans who were out
to ban even the most innocent means of recreation. So they wanted to follow the middle
path in everything and steer clear of the emotional as well as moral excesses. They
insisted on the role of intelligence in everything. The poets of this period are deficient on
the side of emotion and imagination. Dominated by intellect, poetry of this age is
commonly didactic and satirical, a poetry of argument and criticism, of politics and
personalities.

In the second place, the poets of this age are more interested in the town, and
the „cultural‟ society. They have no sympathy for the humbler aspects of life—the life of
the villagers, the shepherds; and no love for nature, the beautiful flowers, the songs of
birds, and landscape as we find in the poets of the Romantic period. Though they
preached a virtuous life, they would not display any feeling which smacked of
enthusiasm and earnestness. Naturally they had no regard for the great poets of the
human heart—Chaucer, Shakespeare and Milton. They had no attachment for the
Middle Ages and their tales of chivalry, adventure and visionary idealism. Spenser,
therefore, did not find favour with them.

In the poetry of this age, form became more important than substance. This love
of superficial polish led to the establishment of a highly artificial and conventional style.
The closed couplet became the only possible form for serious work in verse. Naturally
poetry became monotonous, because the couplet was too narrow and inflexible to be
made the vehicle of high passion and strong imagination. Moreover, as great emphasis
was laid on the imitation of ancient writers, originality was discouraged, and poetry lost
touch with the real life of the people.
Prose being the prominent medium of expression, the rules of exactness,
precision and clarity, which were insisted in the writing of prose, also began to be
applied to poetry. It was demanded of the poet to say all that he had to say in a plain
simple and clear language. The result was that the quality of suggestiveness which
adds so much to the beauty and worth of poetry was sadly lacking in the poetry of this
age. The meaning of poetry was all on the surface, and there was nothing which
required deep study and varied interpretation.

 Alexandar Pope (1688-1744)

Pope is considered as the greatest poet of the Classical period. He is „prince of

classicism‟ as Prof. Etton calls him. He was an invalid, of small sature and delicate
constitution, whose bad nerves and cruel headaches made his life, in his own phrase, a
„long disease‟. Moreover, being a Catholic he had to labour under various restrictions.
But the wonder is that in spite of his manifold handicaps, this small, ugly man has left a
permanent mark on the literature of his age. He was highly intellectual, extremely
ambitious and capable of tremendous industry. These qualities brought him to the front
rank of men of letters, and during his lifetime he was looked upon as a model poet.

The main quality of Pope‟s poetry is its correctness. It was at the age of twenty-three
that he published his Essay on Criticism (1711) and since then till the end of his life he
enjoyed progidious reputation. In this essay Pope insists on following the rules
discovered by the Ancients, because they are in harmony with Nature:

Those rules of old discovered, not devised

Are Nature still, but Nature methodised.

Pope‟s next work, The Rape of the Lock, is in some ways his masterpiece. It is
„mock heroic‟ poem in which he celebrated the theme of the stealth, by Lord Petre of
lock of hair from the head of Miss Arabella. Though the poem is written in a jest and
deals with a very insignificant event, it is given the form of an epic, investing this
frivolous event with mock seriousness and dignity.

By this time Pope had perfected the heroic couplet, and he made use of his
technical skill in translating Homer‟s Illiad and Odyssey which meant eleven years‟ very
hard work. The reputation which Pope now enjoyed created a host of jealous rivals
whom he severely criticised and ridiculed in The Dunciad. This is Pope‟s greatest satire
in which he attacked all sorts of literary incompetence. It is full of cruel and insulting
couplets on his enemies. His next great poem was The Essay on Man (1732-34), which
is full of brilliant oft-quoted passages and lines. His later works Imitations of Horace and
Epistle are also satires and contain biting attacks on his enemies.
Though Pope enjoyed a tremendous reputation during his lifetime and for some
decades after his death, he was so bitterly attacked during the nineteenth century that it
was doubted whether Pope was a poet at all. But in the twentieth century this reaction
subsided, and now it is admitted by great critics that though much that Pope wrote is
prosaic, not of a very high order, yet a part of his poetry is undoubtedly indestructible.
He is the supreme master of the epigrammatic style, of condensing an idea into a line or
couplet. Of course, the thoughts in his poetry are commonplace, but they are given the
most appropriate and perfect expression. The result is that many of them have become
proverbial sayings in the English language. For example:

Who shall decide when doctors disagree?

Thou wert my guide, philosopher, and friend.

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;

The proper study of mankind is man.

Hope springs eternal in the human breast;

Man never is, but always to be, blest.

Minor Poets of the Age of Pope. During his age Pope was by far the greatest of
all poets. There were a few minor poets—Matthew Prior, John Gay, Edward Young,
Thomas Pernell and Lady Winchelsea.

Matthew Prior (1664-1721), who was a diplomat and active politician wrote two
long poems: Solomon on the Vanity of The World and Alma or the Progress of the Mind.
These are serious poems, but the reputation of Prior rests on „light verse‟ dealing with
trifling matters. He is not merely a light-hearted jester, but a true humanist, with sense of
tears as well as laughter as is seen in the “Lines written in the beginning of Mezeraly‟s
(b) Prose of the Age of Pope

The great prose writers of the Age of Pope were Defoe, Addison, Steele and
Swift. The prose of this period exhibits the Classical qualities clearness, vigour and
direct statement.

Daniel Defoe (1661-1731) is the earliest literary journalist in the English

language. He wrote on all sorts of subjects—social, political, literary, and brought out
about 250 publications. He owes his importance, in literature, however, mainly to his
works of fiction which were simply the offshoots of his general journalistic enterprises.
As a journalist he was fond of writing about the lives of famous people who had just
died, and of notorious adventurers and criminals. At the age of sixty he turned his
attention to the writing of prose fiction, and published his first novel Robinson Cruso the
book by which he is universally known. It was followed by other works of fiction. The
Memoirs of a Cavalier, Captain Singleton, Moll Flanders, Colonel Jack, Roxana and
Journal of the Plague Year.

In these works of fiction Defoe gave his stories an air of reality and convinced his
readers of their authenticity. That is why they are appropriately called by Sir Leslie
Stephen as „Fictitious biographies‟ or “History minus the Facts‟. All Defoe's fictions are
written in the biographical form. They follow no system and are narrated in a haphazard
manner which give them a semblance of reality and truth. His stories, told in the plain,
matter-of-fact, business-like way, appropriate to stories of actual life, hence they
possess extraordinary minute realism which is their distinct feature. Here his homely
and colloquial style came to his help. On account of all these qualities Defoe is credited
with being the originator of the English novel. As a writer of prose his gift of narrative
and description is masterly. As he never wrote with any deliberate artistic intention, he
developed a natural style which made him one of the masters of English prose.

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) was the most powerful and original genius of his
age. He was highly intellectual but on account of some radical disorder in his system
and the repeated failures which he had to face in the realisation of his ambition to rise in
public life, made him a bitter, melancholy and sardonic figure. He took delight in flouting
conventions, and undermining the reputation of his apponents. His best-known work,
Gulliver‟s Travels, which is a very popular children‟s book, is also a bitter attack on
contemporary political and social life in particular, and on the meanness and littleness of
man in general. The Tale of a Tub which, like Gulliver‟s Travels, is written in the form of
an allegory, and exposes the weakness of the main religious beliefs opposed to
Protestant religion, is also a satire upon all science and philosophy. His Journal to Stella
which was written to Esther Johnson whom Swift loved, is not only an excellent
commentary on contemporary characters and political events, by one of the most
powerful and original minds of the age, but in love passages, and purely personal
descriptions, it reveals the real tenderness which lay concealed in the depths of his
fierce and domineering nature.

Swift was a profound pessimist. He was essentially a man of his time in his want
of spiritual quality, in his distrust of the visionary and the extravagant, and in his
thoroughly materialistic view of life. As a master of prose-style, which is simple, direct
and colloquial, and free from the ornate and rhetorical elements, Swift has few rivals in
the whole range of English literature. As a satirist his greatest and most effective
weapon is irony. Though apparently supporting a cause which he is really apposing, he
pours ridicule upon ridicule on it until its very foundations are shaken. The finest
example, of irony is to be found in his pamphlet—The Battle of Books, in which he
championed the cause of the Ancients against the Moderns. The mock heroic
description of the great battle in the King‟s Library between the rival hosts is a
masterpiece of its kind.

Joseph Addison (1672-1719) and Sir Richard Steele (1672-1729) who worked in
collaboration, were the originators of the periodical essay. Steele who was more original
led the way by founding The Tatler, the first of the long line of eighteenth century
periodical essays. This was followed by the most famous of them The Spectator, is
which Addison, who had formerly contributed to Steele‟s Tatler, now became the chief
partner. It began on March 1, 1711, and ran till December 20, 1714 with a break of
about eighteen months. In its complete form it contains 635 essays. Of these Addison
wrote 274 and Steele 240; the remaining 121 were contributed by various friends.

The Characters of Steele and Addison were curiously contrasted. Steele was an
emotional, full-blooded kind of man, reckless and dissipated but fundamentally honest
and good-hearted. What there is of pathos and sentiment, and most of what there is of
humour in the Tatler and the Spectator are his. Addison, on the other hand, was an
urbane, polished gentleman of exquisite refinement of taste. He was shy, austere, pious
and righteous. He was a quiet and accurate observer of manners of fashions in life and
conversation.

Both Steele and Addison were great masters of prose. Their essays are
remarkable as showing the growing perfection of the English language. Of the two,
Addison was a greater master of the language. He cultivated a highly cultured and
graceful style a style which can serve as a model. Dr. Johnson very aptly remarked:
“Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not
ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison.” And again he
said: “Give nights and days, Sir, to the study of Addison if you mean to be a good writer,
or what is more worth, an honest man.”