Biography alexander pope short

When he translated the Odysseyhe worked with two other translators, William Broome and Elijah Fenton who completed half of the translation Jokinen. Editorial work Pope also undertook several editorial projects. InPope published the works of William Shakespeare — Jokinen. Pope lived here from until his death in Douglass. Qui nil molitur inepte who wrote nothing inept.

Bowles has strongly and plausibly urged that it was not of the purest or most creditable order. Others have contended that it did not go further than the manners of the age sanctioned; and they say, "a much greater license in conversation and in epistolary correspondence was permitted between the sexes than in our decorous age! And nowhere do we find grosser language than in some of Pope's prose epistles to the Blounts.

His "Pastorals," after having been handed about in MS. It is humiliating to contrast the reception of these empty echoes of inspiration, these agreeable centoswith that of such genuine, although faulty poems, as Keat's "Endymion," Shelley's "Queen Mab," and Wordsworth's "Lyrical Ballads. 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.

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. This, Pope, and some of his biographies alexander pope short, 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. 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 agreeable and fascinating, but somewhat dangerous, biography alexander pope short.

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. 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.

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.

Biography alexander pope short

Inhe 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 biography alexander pope short and sparkling poem, is not a satisfactory translation of the "Iliad," and still less of the "Odyssey. 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 Homerby Broome, Jortin, and others. Pope's education was affected by the recently enacted Test Actsa series of English penal laws that upheld the status of the established Church of Englandbanning 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 In his biography alexander pope short moved to a small estate at Popeswoodin BinfieldBerkshireclose to the royal Windsor Forest. After five years of study, Pope came into contact with figures from London literary society such as William CongreveSamuel Garth and William Trumbull.

At Binfield he made many important friends. One of them, John Caryll the future dedicatee of The Rape of the Lockwas 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 Walsha minor poet, who helped Pope revise his first major work, The Pastorals.

There, he met the Blount sisters, Teresa and Martha Pattyin He remained close friends with Patty until his death, but his friendship with Teresa ended in From the age of 12 he suffered numerous health problems, including Pott diseasea 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. Pope 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. Pope's health than perhaps any man. Cibber 's slander of carnosity is false. He had been gay [happy], but left that way of life upon his acquaintance with Mrs. This earned Pope instant fame and was followed by An Essay on Criticismpublished in Maywhich was equally well received.

Its aim was to satirise ignorance and pedantry through the fictional scholar Martinus Scriblerus. In MarchWindsor Forest [ 6 ] was published to great acclaim. Around this time, he began the work of translating the Iliadwhich was a painstaking process — publication began in and did not end until In the political situation worsened with the death of Queen Anne and the disputed succession between the Hanoverians and the Jacobitesleading to the Jacobite rising of 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".

Pope lived in his parents' house in Mawson Row, Chiswickbetween and ; the red-brick building is now the Mawson Armscommemorating him with a blue plaque. The money made from his translation of Homer allowed Pope to move in to a villa at Twickenhamwhere 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 biography alexander pope short. An Essay on Criticism was first published anonymously on 15 May Pope began writing the poem early in his career and took about three years to finish it. At the time 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 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. Pope's most famous poem is The Rape of the Lockfirst published inwith a revised version in A mock-epicit satirises a high-society quarrel between Arabella Fermor the "Belinda" of the poem and Lord Petrewho had snipped a lock of hair from her head without permission.

The satirical style is tempered, however, by a genuine, almost voyeuristic interest in the "beau-monde" fashionable world of 18th-century society. In the poem, purchased artefacts displace human agency and "trivial things" come to dominate. Though The Dunciad first appeared anonymously in Dublinits authorship 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 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. 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.

InPope published his "Epistle to Burlington ", on the subject of architecture, the first of four poems later grouped as the Moral Essays — Pope's foes claimed he was attacking the Duke of Chandos and his estate, Cannons. Though the charge was untrue, it did much damage to Pope. There has been some speculation on a feud between Pope and Thomas Hearnedue in part to the character of Wormius in The Dunciadwho is seemingly based on Hearne.

An Essay on Man is a philosophical poem in heroic couplets published between and Pope meant it as the centrepiece of a proposed system of ethics to be put forth in poetic form. It was a piece that he sought to make into a larger work, but he did not live to complete it. 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 Bolingbrokeit presents an idea of Pope's view of 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 the "Great Chain of Being", at a middle stage between the angels and the beasts of the world. His Messiah was an imitation of Virgil 70—19 B. He also did a version of Geoffrey Chaucer's — poetry in the English of Pope's day.

But it was Pope's versions of Homer c. Pope undertook the translation of Homer's Iliad because he needed money. The interest earned from his father's annuities money from investments had dropped sharply. The translation occupied him until It was a great financial success, making Pope independent of the customary forms of literary patronage support from wealthy peopleand it was highly praised by critics.

From the time parts of Iliad began to appear, Pope became the victim of numerous pamphlet attacks on his person, politics, and religion. In an increased land tax on Roman Catholics forced the Popes to sell their place at Binfield and to settle at Chiswick. The next year Pope's father died, and in the poet's increased wealth enabled him to move with his mother to Twickenham.

From to Pope was engaged in a version of Odyssey. He worked with two other translators, William Broome and Elijah Fenton. They completed half of the translation between them. It was Pope's name, however, that sold the work, and he naturally received the lion's share biggest part of the profits. Pope also undertook several editorial projects.

Parnell's Poems was followed by an edition of the late Duke of Buckingham's Works Then, inPope's six volumes on the works of William Shakespeare — were published. Pope's edits and explanatory notes were notoriously capricious impulsive and not scholarly. His edition was attacked by Lewis Theobald in Shakespeare Restoreda work that revealed a superior knowledge of editorial technique.

This upset Pope, who then made Theobald the original hero of Dunciad.