Alexander Pope: The Wasp of Twickenham

I don’t know if anyone has ever done a psychological study of Alexander Pope (1688-1744), but surely the accumulated challenges of his life informed his art. Pope stood 4’6″, was hunchbacked, tubercular, suffered from crippling headaches and other chronic pain, and was a member of England’s persecuted Catholic minority. It’s a miracle that he lived, let alone throve, becoming an ornament to the entire nation.

Pope did possess some advantages. His father was a prosperous linen merchant; an uncle (by marriage) was Samuel Cooper, a successful painter of miniatures. Though it was illegal for Catholics to attend school, Pope did discreetly acquire some formal instruction as a boy, which ended when he was about 12. He then pursued his studies on his own, reading widely and deeply in Chaucer,Shakespeare,Dryden,Homer, Virgil, Horace, and Juvenal, while at the same time mastering Latin, Greek, Italian and French. His financial means permitted introductions into literary circles, and he was to befriend Congreve, Wycherly, Swift, Addison, and Steele. With Swift he was to be one of the core members of the Scriblerus Club. He wrote for Addison and Steele’s newspapers The Guardian and The Spectator and contributed some to the writing of his play Cato, one of the many literary influences on the American Revolution. Swift was a Tory, Addison was a Whig. It is a testament to Pope’s abilities that he moved easily in both circles.

Though Pope was a major influence on Byron, his manner of versifying couldn’t be farther from the Romantic sensibility. He was a creature of the Age of Reason. The high plane of Pope’s discourse makes him heir to Milton. Philosophical essays and satires, both forms we commonly associate with prose (both Swift and Voltaire wrote in prose, for example) he bent into strict metrical, rhyming poesy. As with representational painting and sculpture from the Renaissance through the 19th century, such mastery is a lost art. If there were any contemporary wizards of this kind of thing we’d have heard about them.

Pope’s literary debut came with his Pastorals (1709) followed by An Essay on Criticism (1711), which established his reputation. (Ironically, amongst its many prescriptions and proscriptions, Alexander abjures the popular use of alexandrines.) The satire The Rape of the Lock was produced in 1712, and elaborated upon in 1714. From 1715 to 1720 he turned out his translation of Homer’sIliad, which some, like Samuel Johnson, regarded as his finest achievement, although in time it has come to be regarded as a better poem than a translation (i.e. there is more of Pope in it than Homer). Income from the poem allowed him to build his famous estate at Twickenham, outside London, hence his nickname: “The Wasp of Twickenham”. From 1723 to 1725 he edited a six volume collected Shakespeare. The following two years were spent translating The Odyssey (1728). Next came the mock heroic satire The Dunciad (1728) with its takedown of Colley Cibber et al, followed by Moral Essays (1731-35) and the influential, off quoted Essay on Man (1733-34).

Pope’s political writings earned him as many enemies as his gifts won him admirers. Tastes radically shifted in the decades after his death. He remained much out of fashion throughout the 19th century. Ironically, it would be during the 20th century, the Age of Science, that Pope, who had criticized the physical sciences so pointedly in the Essay on Man, would enjoy a revival. From this distance, he has become a key to unlocking the spirit of his era, as much as an artist who touches us directly. Hence, as long as scholarship remains a human pursuit, by no means a given, Alexander Pope will likely continue to be read and appreciated. But at this point in time it seems equally probable that the Study of Man he advocated for in his essay will be utter vanquished by the products of science he warned against.