AD MATREM.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOE."] Sxn,—The week before last I was tempted to send you the lines from Pope beginning "Me let the tender office long engage," but on turning them up I came across a criticism
which made me refrain. The correspondent who quoted the lines in your issue of November 4th and other readers may be interested in what Leslie Stephen says of these very lines :—
" "We should perhaps like to forget that the really exquisite and touching lines in which he speaks of his mother had been so carefully elaborated. If there are more tender and exquisitely expressed lines in the language I know not where to find them ; and yet again I should be glad not to be reminded by a cruel commentator that poor Mrs. Pope bad been dead for two years when they were published, and that even this touching effusion has therefore a taint of dramatic affectation.... To me, I confess, it seems most probable, though at first sight incredible, that these utterances were thoroughly sincere for the moment. I fancy that under Pope's elaborate masks of hypocrisy and mystification there was a heart always abnormally sensitive."
But perhaps, with Leslie Stephen, your readers might also
"like to forget."—I am, Sir, &e., R. F.
Arnheim, Bournemouth.
[Pope constantly kept detached fragments of verse by him for some time before he incorporated them in one of his longer poems, and, consequently, before lie published them. May not this be the explanation of the " dramatic affection " P There is, we believe, plenty of external evidence of Pope's devotion to his mother. Did he not quarrel with Voltaire for using language before Mrs. Pope which the poet thought insulting and offensive P—En. Spectator.]
Previous page
