The Rape of the Lock and Other Major Writings: Poems and Other Writings (Penguin Classics)

by Alexander Pope

  You touch me very sensibly in saying you think so well of my friendship. In that, you do me too much honour – would to God you would (even at this distance) allow me to correct this period,3 and change these phrases according to the real truth of my heart – I am foolish again, and methinks I am imitating in my ravings the dreams of spleenatic enthusiasts4 and solitaires, who fall in love with saints, and fancy themselves in the favour of angels and spirits whom they can never see, or touch. I hope indeed that you, like one of those better beings, have a benevolence towards me; and I (on my part) really look up to you with zeal and fervour; not without some faint expectation of meeting hereafter, which is something betwixt piety and madness …

  I am the most earnest of your well-wishers, and I was going to say your most faithful servant, but am angry at the weakness of all the terms I can use to express myself Yours

  To Teresa and Martha Blount,5 late 1717

  Dear Ladies – I think myself obliged to desire you would not put off any diversion you may find, in the prospect of seeing me on Saturday, which is very uncertain. I take this occasion to tell you once for all, that I design no longer to be a constant companion when I have ceased to be an agreeable one. You have only had, as my friends, the privilege of knowing my unhappiness,6 and are therefore the only people whom my company must necessarily make melancholy. I will not bring myself to you at all hours, like a skeleton, to come across your diversions and dash your pleasures. Nothing can be more shocking than to be perpetually meeting the ghost of an old acquaintance, which is all you can ever see of me.

  You must not imagine this to proceed from any coldness, or the least decrease of friendship to you. If you had any love for me, I should be always glad to gratify you with an object that you thought agreeable. But as your regard is friendship and esteem, those are things that are as well, perhaps better, preserved absent than present. A man that you love is a joy to your eyes at all times; a man that you esteem is a solemn kind of thing, like a priest, only wanted at a certain hour to do his office; ’tis like oil in a salad, necessary, but of no manner of taste. And you may depend upon it, I will wait upon you7 on every real occasion, at the first summons, as long as I live.

  Let me open my whole heart to you. I have sometimes found myself inclined to be in love with you; and as I have reason to know from your temperament and conduct how miserably I should be used in that circumstance, it is worth my while to avoid it. It is enough to be disagreeable, without adding Fool to it, by constant slavery. I have heard indeed of women that have had a kindness for men of my make,8 but it has been after enjoyment, never before; and I know to my cost you have had no taste of that talent in me, which most ladies would not only like better, but understand better, than any other I have.

  I love you so well that I tell you the truth, and that has made me write this letter. I will see you less frequently this winter, as you’ll less want company. When the gay part of the world is gone, I’ll be ready to stop the gap of a vacant hour whenever you please. Till then I’ll converse with those who are more indifferent to me, as you will with those who are more entertaining. I wish you every pleasure God and man can pour upon ye; and I faithfully promise you all the good I can do you, which is, the service of a friend, who will ever be, Ladies, entirely yours

  To Teresa and Martha Blount, 8 October 1718

  Dear Ladies – nothing but your having bid me write to you often, could make me do it again without an apology. I don’t know where you are, or whether you have received my letters, but conclude this can’t be disagreeable to you unless you have altered your minds, a thing which in women I take to be impossible. ’Twill serve, if for nothing else, to give my services to Mr Caryll9 (supposing you with him). If not, keep them yourselves; for services (you know) are of that nature, that like certain other common things, they’ll fit everybody.

  I am with my Lord Bathurst, at my bower,10 in whose groves we had yesterday a dry walk of three hours. It is the place that of all others I fancy, and I am not yet out of humour with it, though I have had it some months. It does not cease to be agreeable to me so late in the season; the very dying of the leaves adds a variety of colours that is not unpleasant. I look upon it as a beauty I once loved, whom I should preserve a respect for in her decay. And as we should look upon a friend, with remembrance how he pleased us once, though now declined from his former gay and flourishing condition.

  I write an hour or two every morning, and then ride out a-hunting upon the Downs,11 eat heartily, talk tender sentiments with Lord B.12 or draw plans for houses and gardens, open avenues, cut glades, plant firs, contrive waterworks, all very fine and beautiful in our own imagination. At nights we play at Commerce, and play pretty high.13 I do more, I bet too, for I am really rich, and must throw away my money if no deserving friend will use it. I like this course of life so well that I am resolved to stay here till I hear of somebody’s being in town that is worth my coming after.

  Since you are so silent in the country, I can’t expect a word from you when you get to London. The first week must needs be wholly employed in making new gowns, the second in showing them, the third in seeing other people’s, the fourth, fifth, and so on, in balls, plays, assemblies, operas, etc. How can a poor translator and hare-hunter hope for a minute’s memory? Yet he comforts himself to reflect that he shall be remembered when people have forgot what colours you wore, and when those at whom you dress shall be dust! This is the pride of a poet; let me see if you dare own what is the pride of a woman. Perhaps one article of it may be to despise those who think themselves of some value, and to show your friends you can live without thinking of ’em at all. Do, keep your own secrets, that such fellows as I may laugh at ye in the valley of Jehosaphat,14 where cunning will be the foolishest thing in nature, and those white bums which I die to see will be shown to all the world. Now what will it avail, Ladies, if you really should do something to make me wonder at, during the short course of this transitory life? as long as I shall infallibly come to know, in the enlightened state of the next world, what was the real reason why you did not favour me with a line?

  But I forget myself. I am talking as to women, things that walk in the country, when possibly by this time you are got to London and are goddesses; for how should you be less when you are in your heaven? If so, most adorable deities, most celestial beauties, hear the often repeated invocations of a poet expecting immortality! So may no complaints of unhappy mortals ever more disturb your eternal diversions! But oh dear angels! do not on any account scratch your backsides; and oh heavenly creatures! never leave the company to p–ss. Maintain your dignity, blessed saints! and scorn to reveal yourselves to fools (though it be but fair play, for they reveal themselves to everybody). Goddesses must be all-sufficient, they can neither want a friend nor a correspondent. How arrogant a wretch am I then, who resolve to be one of these (if not both) to you, as long as I have a day to live?

  Dear Ladies, your most faithful, sincere servant, A. Pope

  To Edward Blount,15 2 June 1725

  You show yourself a just man and a friend in those guesses and suppositions you make at the possible reasons of my silence, every one of which is a true one. As to forgetfulness of you or yours, I assure you, the promiscuous conversations of the town serve only to put me in mind of better, and more quiet, to be had in a corner of the world (undisturbed, innocent, serene, and sensible) with such as you. Let no access of any distrust make you think of me differently in a cloudy day from what you do in the most sunshiny weather. Let the young ladies be assured I make nothing new in my gardens without wishing to see the print of their fairy steps in every part of ’em. I have put the last hand to my works of this kind, in happily finishing the subterraneous way and grotto. I there found a spring of the clearest water, which falls in a perpetual rill that echoes through the cavern day and night. From the River Thames, you see through my arch up a walk of the wilderness16 to a kind of open temple, wholly composed of shells in the rustic manner; and from that distanc
e under the temple you look down through a sloping arcade of trees, and see the sails on the river passing suddenly and vanishing, as through a perspective glass.17 When you shut the doors of this grotto, it becomes on the instant, from a luminous room, a camera obscura,18 on the walls of which all the objects of the river, hills, woods, and boats, are forming a moving picture in their visible radiations. And when you have a mind to light it up, it affords you a very different scene: it is finished with shells interspersed with pieces of looking-glass in angular forms, and in the ceiling is a star of the same material, at which when a lamp (of an orbicular figure of thin alabaster) is hung in the middle, a thousand pointed rays glitter and are reflected over the place. There are connected to this grotto by a narrower passage two porches, with niches and seats: one toward the river, of smooth stones, full of light and open; the other toward the arch of trees, rough with shells, flints, and iron ore. The bottom is paved with simple pebble, as the adjoining walk up the wilderness to the temple is to be cockle-shells in the natural taste, agreeing not ill with the little dripping murmur and the aquatic idea of the whole place. It wants nothing to complete it but a good statue with an inscription, like that beautiful antique one which you know I am so fond of, Hujus Nympha loci, sacri, custodia fontis,

  Dormio, dum blandæ sentio murmur aquæ.

  Parce meum, quisquis tangis cava marmora somnum

  Rumpere, seu bibas, sive lavere, tace.19

  Nymph of the Grot, these sacred springs I keep,

  And to the murmur of these waters sleep;

  Whoe’er thou art, ah, gently tread the cave,

  Ah, bathe in silence, or in silence lave.20

  You’ll think I have been very poetical in this description, but it is pretty near the truth. I wish you were here to bear testimony how little it owes to art, either the place itself, or the image I give of it.

  I am, etc.

  To John Gay,21 October 1730

  It is true that I write to you very seldom, and have no pretence of writing which satisfies me, because I have nothing to say that can give you much pleasure: only merely that I am in being, which in truth is of little consequence to one from whose conversation I am cut off by such accidents or engagements as separate us. I continue, and ever shall, to wish you all good happiness; I wish that some lucky event might set you in a state of ease and independency all at once! and that I might live to see you as happy as this silly world and fortune can make anyone. Are we never to live together more, as we once did? I find my life ebbing apace, and my affections strengthening as my age increases; not that I am worse, but better, in my health than last winter, but my mind finds no amendment or improvement, nor support to lean upon, from those about me, and so I feel myself leaving the world as fast as it leaves me. Companions I have enough, friends few, and those too warm in the concerns of the world for me to bear pace with; or else so divided from me that they are but like the dead whose remembrance I hold in honour. Nature, temper, and habit from my youth made me have but one strong desire; all other ambitions, my person, education, constitution, religion, etc. conspired to remove far from me. That desire was to fix and preserve a few lasting, dependable friendships; and the accidents which have disappointed me in it have put a period to all my aims. So I am sunk into an idleness, which makes me neither care nor labour to be noticed by the rest of mankind; I propose no rewards to myself, and why should I take any sort of pains? Here I sit and sleep, and probably here I shall sleep till I sleep for ever, like the old man of Verona.22 I hear of what passes in the busy world with so little attention that I forget it the next day, and as to the learned world, there is nothing passes in it. I have no more to add, but that I am with the same truth as ever, Yours, etc.

  To Jonathan Swift, 2 April 1733

  You say truly that death is only terrible to us as it separates us from those we love, but I really think those have the worst of it who are left by us, if we are true friends. I have felt more (I fancy) in the loss of poor Mr Gay23 than I shall suffer in the thought of going away myself into a state that can feel none of this sort of losses. I wished vehemently to have seen him in a condition of living independent, and to have lived in perfect indolence the rest of our days together, the two most idle, most innocent, undesigning poets of our age. I now as vehemently wish you and I might walk into the grave together, by as slow steps as you please, but contentedly and cheerfully. Whether that ever can be, or in what country, I know no more, than into what country we shall walk out of the grave. But it suffices me to know it will be exactly what region or state our Maker appoints, and that whatever Is, is Right.24

  Our poor friend’s papers are partly in my hands, and for as much as is so, I will take care to suppress things unworthy of him. As to the Epitaph,25 I am sorry you gave a copy, for it will certainly by that means come into print, and I would correct it more, unless you will do it for me (and that I shall like as well). Upon the whole I earnestly wish your coming over hither,26 for this reason among many others, that your influence may be joined with mine to suppress whatever we may judge proper of his papers. To be plunged in my neighbours and my papers will be your inevitable fate as soon as you come. That I am an author whose characters27 are thought of some weight appears from the great noise and bustle that the court and town make about any I give; and I will not render them less important or interesting by sparing vice and folly, or by betraying the cause of truth and virtue. I will take care they shall be such as no man can be angry at but the persons I would have angry. You are sensible with what decency and justice I paid homage to the Royal Family, at the same time that I satirized false courtiers and spies, etc. about ’em. I have not the courage however to be such a satirist as you, but I would be as much, or more, a philosopher. You call your satires libels; I would rather call my satires epistles. They will consist more of morality than wit, and grow graver, which you will call duller. I shall leave it to my antagonists to be witty (if they can) and content myself to be useful, and in the right.

  Tell me your opinion as to Lady M——’s or Lord H——’s performance?28 They are certainly the top wits of the court, and you may judge by that single piece what can be done against me; for it was laboured, corrected, pre-commended, and post-disapproved, so far as to be disowned by themselves, after each had highly cried it up for the others. I have met with some complaints, and heard at a distance of some threats, occasioned by my satires. I sent fair messages to acquaint them where I was to be found in town, and to offer to call at their houses to satisfy them, and so it dropped. It is very poor in anyone to rail and threaten at a distance, and have nothing to say to you when they see you. – I am glad you persist and abide by so good a thing as that poem,29 in which I am immortal for my morality. I never took any praise so kindly, and yet I think I deserve that praise better than I do any other. – When does your Collection come out, and what will it consist of? I have but last week finished another of my Epistles, in the order of the system;30 and this week (exercitandi gratia31) I have translated, or rather parodied, another of Horace’s,32 in which I introduce you advising me about my expenses, housekeeping, etc. But these things shall lie by, till you come to carp at ’em, and alter rhymes, and grammar, and triplets, and cacophonies of all kinds.

  Our Parliament will sit till midsummer, which I hope may be a motive to bring you rather in summer than so late as autumn; you use to love what I hate, a hurry of politics, etc. Courts I see not, courtiers I know not, kings I adore not, queens I compliment not; so I am never like to be in fashion, nor in dependance. I heartily join with you in pitying our poor Lady33 for her unhappiness, and should only pity her more, if she had more of what they at court call happiness. Come then, and perhaps we may go all together into France at the end of the season, and compare the liberties of both kingdoms. Adieu.

  Believe me dear sir (with a thousand warm wishes, mixed with short sighs), ever yours

  To Jonathan Swift, 19 December 1734

  I am truly sorry for any complaint you have, a
nd it is in regard to the weakness of your eyes that I write (as well as print) in folio.34 You’ll think (I know you will, for you have all the candour of a good understanding) that the thing which men of our age feel the most is the friendship of our equals; and that therefore whatever affects those who are stepped a few years before us35 cannot but sensibly affect us who are to follow. It troubles me to hear you complain of your memory,36 and if I am in any part of my constitution younger than you, it will be in my remembering everything that has pleased me in you, longer than perhaps you will. The two summers we passed together dwell always on my mind, like a vision which gave me a glimpse of a better life and better company than this world otherwise afforded. I am now an individual upon whom no other depends, and may go where I will, if the wretched carcase I am annexed to did not hinder me.37 I rambled by very easy journeys this year to Lord Bathurst and Lord Peterborow, who upon every occasion commemorate, love, and wish for you. I now pass my days between Dawley, London, and this place,38 not studious, nor idle, rather polishing old works than hewing out new. I redeem now and then a paper that hath been abandoned several years, and of this sort you’ll soon see one, which I inscribe to our old friend Arbuthnot.39

  Thus far I had written, and thinking to finish my letter the same evening, was prevented by company, and the next morning found myself in a fever, highly disordered, and so continued in bed for five days, and in my chamber till now; but so well recovered as to hope to go abroad tomorrow, even by the advice of Dr Arbuthnot. He himself, poor man, is much broke,40 though not worse than for these two last months he has been. He took extremely kindly to your letter. I wish to God we could once meet again, before that separation which yet I would be glad to believe shall reunite us; but He who made us, not for ours but his purposes, knows whether it be for the better or the worse that the affections of this life should, or should not, continue into the other; and doubtless it is as it should be. Yet I am sure that while I am here, and the thing that I am, I shall be imperfect without the communication of such friends as you. You are to me like a limb lost, and buried in another country; though we seem quite divided, every accident makes me feel you were once a part of me. I always consider you so much as a friend that I forget you are an author, perhaps too much, but ’tis as I would desire you would do to me. However, if I could inspirit you to bestow correction upon those three Treatises41 which you say are so near completed, I should think it a better work than any I can pretend to of my own. I am almost at the end of my morals, as I’ve been, long ago, of my wit. My system is a short one, and my circle narrow. Imagination has no limits, and that is a sphere in which you may move on to eternity; but where one is confined to truth (or to speak more like a human creature, to the appearances of truth), we soon find the shortness of our tether. Indeed, by the help of a metaphysical chain of ideas, one may extend the circulation, go round and round for ever, without making any progress beyond the point to which Providence has pinned us. But this does not satisfy me, who would rather say a little to no purpose than a great deal. Lord B. is voluminous, but he is voluminous only to destroy volumes. I shall not live, I fear, to see that work printed,42 he is so taken up still (in spite of the monitory hint given in the first line of my Essay) with particular men, that he neglects mankind, and is still a creature of this world, not of the universe: this world, which is a name we give to Europe, to England, to Ireland, to London, to Dublin, to the court, to the castle, and so diminishing, till it comes to our own affairs and our own persons. When you write (either to him or to me, for we accept it as all one), rebuke him for it, as a divine if you like it, or as a badineur if you think that more effectual.