Alexander Pope - Delphi Poets Series

by Alexander Pope

  ‘The peculiar study of the Academy of France,’ Defoe writes, ‘has been to refine and correct their own language, which they have done to that happy degree that we see it now spoken in all the courts of Christendom as the language allowed to be most universal. I had the honour once to be a member of a small society who seemed to offer at this noble design in England; but the greatness of the work and the modesty of the gentlemen concerned prevailed with them to desist from an enterprise which appeared too great for private hands to undertake. We want indeed a Richelieu to commence such a work, for I am persuaded were there such a genius in our kingdom to lead the way, there would not want capacities who could carry on the work to a glory equal to all that has gone before them. The English tongue is a subject not at all less worthy the labours of such a society than the French, and capable of a much greater perfection. The learned among the French will own that the comprehensiveness of expression is a glory in which the English tongue not only equals, but excels its neighbours.... It is a great pity that a subject so noble should not have some as noble to attempt it; and for a method what greater can be set before us than the Academy of Paris, which, to give the French their due, stands foremost among all the great attempts in the learned part of the world.’

  Defoe also projected a Royal Military Academy, and an academy for women which should have only one entrance and a large moat round it. With these precautions, spies, he observes, would be unnecessary, since, in his opinion, ‘there needs no other care to prevent intriguing than to keep the men effectually away.’ He had the Eastern notion of guarding women from danger by preventing the access to it, yet he could write:

  ‘A woman of sense and manners is the finest and most delicate part of God’s creation; the glory of her Maker, and the great instance of His singular regard to man, His darling creature, to whom He gave the best gift either God could bestow or man receive. And it is the sordidest piece of folly and ingratitude in the world to withhold from the sex the due lustre which the advantages of education gives to the natural beauty of their minds. A woman well bred and well taught, furnished with the additional accomplishments of knowledge and behaviour, is a creature without comparison; her society is the emblem of sublime enjoyments; her person is angelic and her conversation heavenly.... She is every way suitable to the sublimest wish, and the man that has such a one to his portion has nothing to do but to rejoice in her and be thankful.’

  In verse Defoe published the True Born Englishman (1701), in defence of King William and his Dutch followers:

  ‘William’s the name that’s spoke by every tongue, William’s the darling subject of my song; Listen, ye virgins, to the charming sound, And in eternal dances hand it round. Your early offerings to this altar bring, Make him at once a lover and a king.’

  The nonsense deepens as the rhyme goes on. For William every tender vow is to be made, he is to be the first thought in the morning, and his name will act as a charm, affrighting the infernal powers and guarding from the terror of the night.

  The poem proved very popular, and Defoe writes that had he been able to enjoy the profit of his own labour he would have gained above £1,000. He printed nine editions at the price of one shilling a copy, but meanwhile twelve surreptitious editions were published and sold for a few pence, a fraud for which he says he had no remedy but patience. Throughout his busy life of authorship he was indeed continually victimized by pirates.

  While in verse Defoe extolled the king as if he were a demi-god, he did William good service by his pamphlets, and was in some degree admitted into his confidence.

  Up to the king’s death in 1702 his course appears to have been straightforward; after the accession of Anne he acted a less honourable part. No fault can be found with his design that year in writing The Shortest Way with the Dissenters, a piece of irony unsurpassed in that age until the publication of Swift’s Modest Proposal, twenty-seven years later. The satire was at first accepted as a serious argument. The Dissenters were alarmed, and the most bigoted of High Churchmen delighted. Then, Defoe’s aim being discovered, both parties joined in the cry for vengeance. He was condemned to stand for three days in the pillory, and was afterwards imprisoned in Newgate. To the ‘hieroglyphic state machine, contrived to punish Fancy in,’ the undaunted man addressed a hymn which was hawked about the streets, and the mob instead of pelting him with offensive missiles, covered him with flowers. ‘Earless on high stood unabashed Defoe,’ says Pope. He was unabashed, but he was not earless.

  In Newgate he remained until 1704, when he was released by Harley. In prison he wrote a minutely circumstantial account of the great storm commemorated in Addison’s Campaign. How much of Defoe’s narrative is truth and how much invention it is impossible to say. The fact that he solemnly vouches for the accuracy of his statements inclines one to believe that they are not to be trusted, for this was always Defoe’s rôle as a writer of fiction. His first and most deliberate effort is to impose upon his readers, and in this art he is without a rival.

  While in Newgate he began his Review, a political journal of great ability. The first number was published in February, 1704, and it existed, though not in its original form, for more than nine years.

  ‘When it is remembered that no other pen was ever employed than that of Defoe, upon a work appearing at such frequent intervals, extending over more than nine years, and embracing, in more than five thousand printed pages, essays on almost every branch of human knowledge, the achievement must be pronounced a great one, even if he had written nothing else. If we add that between the dates of the first and last numbers of the Review he wrote and published no less than eighty other distinct works, containing 4,727 pages, and perhaps more not now known, the fertility of his genius must appear as astonishing as the greatness of his capacity for labour.’

  Defoe was permitted to leave his prison upon condition that he should act in the secret service of the Government, and his work was that of an hireling writer unburdened by principle. When Harley was ejected he made himself useful to Godolphin; when Godolphin was dismissed he went back to Harley, and ‘the spirit of the Review changed abruptly.’ A more useful man for the work he had undertaken could not be found. His dexterity, his boldness, his knowledge of men and of affairs, his readiness as a writer, and it must be added his unscrupulousness, fitted him admirably for services which had to be done in secret.

  Much that he did openly was deserving of high praise. He was tolerant in an intolerant age, he did his best to forward the Union of England and Scotland, his patriotic spirit was not feigned, his words are often weighty with wisdom, and it has been truly said, that ‘his powerful advocacy was enlisted in favour of almost every practicable scheme of social improvement that came to the front in his time.’

  With equal truth the writer adds that Defoe was ‘a wonderful mixture of knave and patriot.’ The knavery is seen to some extent in his method of workmanship as a man of letters. In A True Relation of the Apparition of one Mrs. Veal the next day after her Death to one Mrs. Bargrave at Canterbury, 8th September, 1705 (1706) Defoe’s art of mystification is skilfully practised.

  ‘This relation,’ he says in the Preface, ‘is matter of fact, and attended with such circumstances as may induce any reasonable man to believe it. It was sent by a gentleman, a Justice of Peace at Maidstone, in Kent, and a very intelligent person, to his friend in London as it is here worded; which discourse is here attested by a very sober and understanding gentleman, who had it from his kinswoman who lives in Canterbury, within a few doors of the house in which the within-named Mrs. Bargrave lives ... and who positively assured him that the whole matter as it is related and laid down is really true, and what she herself had in the same words, as near as may be, from Mrs. Bargrave’s own mouth.’

  In addition to this circumstantial statement, the veritable appearance of the ghostly lady is confirmed by the fact that she wore a scoured silk gown, newly made up, which, as Mrs. Bargrave told a friend, she felt and commended. ‘Then Mrs. Watson
cried out, “you have seen her indeed, for none knew but Mrs. Veal and myself that the gown was scoured.”’ The ghost came chiefly for the purpose of recommending Drelincourt’s volume, A Christian’s Defence Against the Fear of Death, then in its third edition. The fourth edition contained Mrs. Bargrave’s story. ‘I am unable to say,’ Mr. Lee writes, ‘when Defoe’s “Apparition” became a necessary appendage to the book; but think, that since the eleventh edition, to the present time, Drelincourt has never been published without it.’

  When in 1719, at the age of fifty-nine, he produced his first and greatest work of fiction, Robinson Crusoe, he aimed by the constant reiteration of commonplace details to give a matter-of-fact aspect to the narrative, and in most of his later novels, with the exception of Colonel Jack (1722), which he allows to be in part a ‘moral romance,’ Defoe boldly maintains that his relations are in every respect true to biography and to history. To make this more probable he overloads his pages with a number of business-like statements, and with affairs so insignificant and sordid that only his genius can save the narrative from being wearisome. To inculcate morality he carries his readers into the worst dens of vice — his heroes being pickpockets, pirates, and convicts, and his heroines depraved women of the lowest order. The interest felt in Captain Singleton (1720), in Moll Flanders (1722), in Colonel Jack (1722), and in Roxana (1724), is to be found in the minute record of their shameless adventures, their miseries and vices. When the characters reform, Defoe’s occupation is gone. The atmosphere the reader is forced to breathe in these tales is indeed so oppressive that he will be glad to escape from it into the pure and exhilarating air of a Shakespeare or a Scott.

  A critic has asserted that as models of fictitious narrative these tales are supreme, but it is impossible to agree with this judgment. The highest imaginative art is not deceptive art. The fact that Lord Chatham thought the Memoirs of a Cavalier (1720) a true history, is not to the credit of the work as fiction. As well, it has been said, might you claim the highest genius for the painter, whose fruit and flowers were so deceptively painted as to tempt birds to peck at the canvas.

  Whatever interest the reader feels in Defoe’s ‘secondary novels,’ of which Roxana is the most powerful, is due to scenes which disgust as much as they impress. The vividness with which they are depicted is undeniable, but one does not desire to inspect filth with a microscope. Happily Robinson Crusoe, on which the author’s fame rests, is a thoroughly healthy book that still holds its place as the best, or one of the best, volumes ever written for boys. There is genius as well as extraordinary skill in the way this admirable story is told, but it is not among the fictions which are read with as much pleasure in old age as in youth. Defoe’s amazing gift of invention does not compensate for the want of a creative and elevating imagination.

  The History of the Plague in London (1722) stands next to Robinson Crusoe in literary merit. Had Defoe been a witness, as he pretends to have been, of the scenes which he describes, the record could not be more vivid. It professes to have been ‘written by a citizen who continued all the while in London,’ and ‘lived without Aldgate Church and Whitechapel Bars, on the left hand or north side of the street.’ In this case, as in others, the circumstantial character of the narrative led readers to regard it as a true history, and Dr. Mead, in his Discourse on the Plague (1744), quotes the book as an authority.

  Highly characteristic of Defoe’s style, and of his art as a moralist is the Religious Courtship, also published in 1722. It is the fictitious history of a family told partly in dialogue, and so written as to attract the reader in spite of repetitions and of reflections as praiseworthy as they are commonplace. It appeals to a class whose attention would not be won by fine literature, and has not appealed in vain, for the book, after passing through a large number of editions, has not yet lost its popularity. Morally the work is unobjectionable, though not a little narrow, and it is strange that it should have appeared about the same time as a story so offensively coarse as Moll Flanders.

  The most veracious book written by Defoe is A Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain, By a Gentleman, 1724, in three volumes. The full title of the work is too long to quote, but it may be observed that the promises it holds out under five headings are satisfactorily fulfilled. The Tour bears the marks of having been written with great care and from personal observation throughout. Defoe states that before publishing the book he had made seventeen large circuits or separate journeys, and three general tours through the whole island. It contains curious information as to the state of England and Scotland one hundred and seventy years ago, and readers interested in our social progress and the industrial life of the country will find much to interest them in the traveller’s shrewd observations and careful details. The love of mountain and lake scenery felt by Gray more than forty years later was a passion unknown to Defoe and to most of his contemporaries. In the Tour Westmoreland is described as the wildest, most barbarous and frightful country of any which the author had passed over. He observes that it is ‘of no advantage to represent horror,’ and the impassable hills with their snow-covered tops ‘seemed,’ he says, ‘to tell us all the pleasant part of England was at an end.’ The Tour exhibits Defoe’s literary gift of expressing what he has to say in the clearest language. A homely style which fulfils its purpose has a merit deserving of recognition. For steady work upon the road the sober hackney is of more service than the race-horse.

  Defoe was a husband and father and a man of affairs, yet, like his own Crusoe, he lived a lonely life, and in 1731, owing to some strange circumstance of which there is no record, died a lonely death at a lodging-house at Moorfields. He has been called the father of the English novel, and deserves the title, although on a slighter scale Steele and Addison preceded him as writers of fiction. As a novelist he is without refinement, without ideality, without passion; he looks at life from a low level, but in the narrow territory of which he is master — the art of realistic invention — his power of insight is incontestible. Defoe adopted a method dear in our day to some of the least worthy of French novelists, who while aiming to copy Nature debase her. For Nature must be interpreted by Art, since only thus can we obtain a likeness that shall be both beautiful and true. Defoe, nevertheless, has contributed one book of lasting value to the literature of his country, and such a gift, in the eyes of the literary chronicler, hides a multitude of faults.

  John Dennis (1657-1733-4).

  John Dennis was born in London and educated at Harrow and Caius College, Cambridge. His relations with Pope give him a more prominent position among men of letters than he would otherwise deserve, and mark with unpleasing distinctness the coarse methods of literary warfare adopted in Pope’s day. The poet began the attack in his Essay on Criticism. Dennis had written a tragedy called Appius and Virginia, and Pope, who had a grudge against him for not admiring his Pastorals, showed his spite in the following lines:

  ‘But Appius reddens at each word you speak, And stares tremendous, with a threatening eye, Like some fierce tyrant in old tapestry.’

  It was perilous in Pope to allude to the personal defects of an antagonist, and Dennis attacked him coarsely in return as a ‘young, squab, short gentleman, an eternal writer of amorous pastoral madrigals, and the very bow of the god of Love.’ ‘He has reason,’ he adds, ‘to thank the good gods that he was born a modern; for had he been born of Grecian parents, and his father by consequence had by law the absolute disposal of him, his life had been no longer than one of his poems — the life of half a day.’

  Dennis’s pamphlet on the Essay caused Pope some pain when he heard of it, ‘But it was quite over,’ he told Spence, ‘as soon as I came to look into his book and found he was in such a passion.’

  The critic, however, was a thorn in Pope’s flesh for many a year, and the poet showed his irritation by assaulting him in prose and verse. Dennis was equally ready, although not equally capable of returning the poet’s blows, and when free from the impotence of anger, made s
everal shrewd critical thrusts which his antagonist felt keenly.

  Dennis aspired to be a poet and dramatist. He wrote a bombastic poem in blank verse called The Monument, sacred to the immortal memory of ‘the good, the great, the god-like, William III.’; a poem, also in blank verse, and still more ‘tremendous,’ to quote his favourite word, on the Battle of Blenheim, in which he frequently invokes his soul to say and sing a thousand things far beyond his soul’s reach — and a poem equally laboured and grandiloquent, on the Battle of Ramillies, in which there are passages that read like a burlesque of Milton. Dennis observes in his Grounds of Criticism in Poetry (1704) that ‘poetry unless it pleases, nay, and pleases to a height, is the most contemptible thing in the world.’ This is just criticism, but the writer did not recognize that his own verse was contemptible. In this essay, which contains many sound critical remarks and an appreciation of Milton seldom felt at that time, he has the bad taste to quote as an illustration of the sublime, a passage from his own paraphrase of the Te Deum:

  ‘Where’er at utmost stretch we cast our eyes Through the vast frightful spaces of the skies, Ev’n there we find Thy glory, there we gaze On Thy bright Majesty’s unbounded blaze; Ten thousand suns prodigious globes of light At once in broad dimensions strike our sight; Millions behind, in the remoter skies, Appear but spangles to our wearied eyes; And when our wearied eyes want farther strength To pierce the void’s immeasurable length Our vigorous towering thoughts still further fly, And still remoter flaming worlds descry; But even an Angel’s comprehensive thought Cannot extend so far as Thou hast wrought; Our vast conceptions are by swelling, brought, Swallowed and lost in Infinite, to nought.’