MR. LESLIE STEPHEN'S " POPE."*
IT is probable that as long as men care for poetry and for litera- ture there will exist a Pope controversy. Pope's works and life abound with topics calling for discussion, and the labour of years may be vainly expended on this perplexing and unsatis- factory subject. What position can Pope claim as a poet, what was his character as a man ? These are questions which will be brought forward again and again. And they cannot be kept apart. To understand Pope's verse and correspondence, we must understand Pope. If we were rash enough to judge of him by certain passages of his poetry, and still more by the sentiments uttered a thousand times in his letters, we should be apt to think him a man of exalted benevolence, bent on high objects, and superior to the unworthy jealousies and mean aims which disgraced the Grub-Street writers of the day. The moral maxims which adorn the correspondence are in the highest degree edifying, or would be so, did we not know that they are mere sentiments, after all, and that the poet's actions generally belied his words. The insincerity of Pope has been proved beyond a doubt by the labours of the late Mr. Dilke and of Mr. Elwin, and the sense of this insincerity affects the tone of recent commentators and biographers. It is evident that Pope's falseness disgusted Mr. Elwin, who at times can with difficulty confine his indignation within just limits. Mr. Leslie Stephen practises more restraint, or rather, has less scope for the expression of contempt at the poet's ingenuity of deceit. That this fault should force itself upon the attention of every student of Pope is inevitable, and it is also inevitable that it should detract from the charm of a biographer's narrative. Mr Stephen does not spare Pope. In describing his failings he uses very strong language indeed. When he calls the poet a liar and a hypocrite the words are honest, and when he adds that the foundation of his character was not selfish or grovelling, he does little to mitigate their force. Mr. Stephen is not un- generous, and he allows much, as he is bound to do, for physical infirmities ; but this popular life of Pope, although admirably written, is not fitted to make Pope popular. Possibly, the author's view of the subject is not quite the true one ; possibly, while giving full prominence to Pope's defects, he is not sufficiently impressed by his virtues. Mr. Stephen's entire familiarity with his subject may have led him to regard it with something like weariness. Pope, as the head of a brilliant circle of wits, in the most brilliant, though not the greatest, period of our literary history, deserved, we venture to think, somewhat more honour than Mr. Stephen has awarded him. Indeed, the biographer seems determined to look at his subject from a prosaic standing-point, and if imagination leads us to conjure up a fascinating scene, when some of the most illustrious men of the age assembled under the poet's roof at Twickenham, the illusion is forthwith destroyed by a passage like the following, which is, unfortunately, too true to be con- tradicted :—
" Those who do not know how often the encounter of brilliant wits tends to neutralise rather than stimulate their activity, may wish to have been present at a dinner which took place at Twickenham on July 6th, 1726, when the party was made up of Pope, the most finished poet of the day ; Swift, the deepest humonrist ; Bolingbroke, the most brilliant politician ; Congreve, the wittiest writer of comedy ; and Gay, the author of the most successful burlesque. The envious may console themselves by thinking that Pope very likely went to sleep, that Swift was deaf and overbearing, that Congreve and Bolingbroke were painfully witty, and Gay frightened into silence."
Pope is probably far more delightful as a poet than he was as a companion. His sister said she had never seen him laugh heartily. Dr. Johnson states that lie went to sleep at his own table when the Prince of Wales was talking poetry to him,— "certainly a severe trial," adds Mr. Stephen ; Swift complains of him as silent and inattentive, and gives also a tale of his lack of sociability and apparent stinginess, according to which Pope was entertaining two friends, and when four glasses of wine were consumed from a pint, he retired, saying, " Gentle- men, I leave you to your wine." "I tell that story to every- body," says Swift, " in commendation of Mr. Pope's abstemi- ousness." Yet Pope, as Mr. Stephen reminds us, pampered his appetite with highly-seasoned dishes, and as far as he could venture to be one, was an epicure. But he had to pay dearly for any extravagance at the dinner-table, and seldom, if ever, knew what it was to feel tolerably well. That "long disease," • English Men of Letters : Alexander Pope. By Leslie Stephen. London : Macmillan and Co.
his life, will account for much in Pope's sad story which would be otherwise inexplicable. It was not wholly sad, and the courage with which he fought against his daily weakness does him infinite credit. With the constitution of a confirmed invalid, and a sensitiveness that frequently gave him exquisite pain, he had the courage of a hero. And the sense of power amidst all that frailty must have afforded Pope exquisite pleasure. He was foolish enough to call verse-making an idle trade, but it was a trade which gave him exhaustless delight. Not only did poetry bring him wealth, while placing him in a position which no wealth can bestow, but it proved the chief solace of a life that would have been desolate indeed without it.
Mr. Stephen is not at all disposed to overrate Pope's achieve-
ments as a poet, but he allows that he has succeeded in doing with unsurpassable excellence what innumerable rivals
have failed to do as well. " The explanation is," he adds, " if the phrase explains anything, that he was a man of genius, or that he brought to a task not of the highest class a keenness of sen- sibility, a conscientious desire to do his very best, and a capa- city for taking pains with his work, which enabled him to be as indisputably the first in his own peculiar line, as our greatest men have been in far more lofty undertakings." All men of genius have a capacity for taking pains, but surely neither painstaking nor conscientiousness would have done much for Pope, without the genius which Mr. Stephen grants at first, and seems disposed to detract from afterwards.
Some of the author's critical comments are very suggestive. Pope, he says, " can be inimitably pungent, but he can never be simply playful;" he "felt and thought by shocks and elec- tric flashes ;" his emotion " came in sudden jets and gushes,
instead of a continuous stream He can perceive admir- ably all that can be seen at a glance, from a single point of
view. Though he could not be continuous, he could return again and again to the same point ; he could polish, correct, eliminate superfluities, compress his meaning more and more closely, till he has constructed short passages of imperishable excellence." Mr. Stephen terms the kind of writing in which Pope is unrivalled " polished prose, with occasional gleams of genuine poetry," and observes, in which we agree with him, that a single pathetic touch of Cowper or Wordsworth strikes incomparably deeper than the pathos of Pope. And yet there are passages in Pope which, if their charm be due in a measure to rhetorical skill, do find their way to the heart. Mr. Stephen acknowledges this in quoting (with strange inaccuracy, by-the- by,) the poet's beautiful words on his mother, observing that he knows not where to find more tender and exquisitely expressed lines ; and the following fine lines, if not tender, do create a feeling of sympathy which is allied to pathos :-
" Long as to him who works for debt, the day, Long as the night to her whose love's away, Long as the year's dull circle seems to run, When the brisk minor pants for twenty-one,— So slow the unprofitable moments roll, That lock up all the functions of my soul, That keep me from myself ; and still delay Life's instant business to a future day : That task, which as we follow, or despise, The eldest is a fool, the youngest wise; Which, done, the poorest can no wants endure, And which, not done, the richest must be poor."
It is unnecessary to dwell at much length on a volume which will be read by all who read Pope. That it is written with great literary skill need scarcely be stated; and those who are familiar with Mr. Stephen's criticisms will anticipate an inde- pendent judgment on the many questions of controversy that gather round the name of Pope. Some of these he does not undertake to solve. Nobody, he says humorously, can now say whether Teresa Blount pinched her mother, nor what would have been her account of Martha's relations to Pope ; but he treats the story of Martha's " shameful unkindness," related by Johnson, as clearly exaggerated, or quite unfounded ; the story of the Duchess of Marlborough's bribe he regards as
certainly not proved, and on the whole improbable; and he has, of course, no excuse to offer for what appears to be the worst
act of Pope's life, his treachery towards Swift with regard to the publication of their correspondence in Dublin. There is no fear that Pope will cease to be a great English classic ; indeed, there are many indications that his fame is growing, and Mr.
Stephen's vivid and compact biography is likely to be welcomed by many readers.
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