Not, therefore, for superior correctness, but for qualities the very same as belong to his most distinguished brethren, is Pope to be considered a great poet; for impassioned thinking, powerful description, pathetic reflection, brilliant narration. His characteristic difference is simply that he carried these powers into a different field, and moved chiefly amongst the social paths of men, and viewed their characters as operating through their manners. And our obligations to him arise chiefly on this ground, that having already, in the persons of earlier poets, carried off the palm in all the grander trials of intellectual strength, for the majesty of the epopee and the impassioned vehemence of the tragic drama, to Pope we owe it that we can now claim an equal preeminence in the sportive and aerial graces of the mock heroic and satiric muse; that in the Dunciad we possess a peculiar form of satire, in which (according to a plan unattempted by any other nation) we see alternately her festive smile and her gloomiest scowl; that the grave good sense of the nation has here found its brightest mirror; and, finally, that through Pope the cycle of our poetry is perfected and made orbicular, that from that day we might claim the laurel equally, whether for dignity or grace.
‘The death of Alexander Pope’ by William Mason. Diana holds the dying Pope and John Milton, Edmund Spenser and Geoffrey Chaucer prepare to welcome him to Heaven.
St Mary’s Church, Twickenham, London — Pope’s final resting place. Pope died in Twickenham in 1744 and was buried next to his mother in the parish church. His friend William Warburton later erected a monument to him on the north wall commenting his preference for Twickenham over Westminster Abbey.
The church today
Pope’s grave
Table of Contents
The Poetry Collections
EARLY POEMS
PASTORALS
WINDSOR FOREST
AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM
POEMS, 1708-17
THE RAPE OF THE LOCK
ELOISA TO ABELARD
POEMS: 1718-27
THE CURLL MISCELLANIES
POEMS SUGGESTED BY GULLIVER
LATER POEMS
EPIGRAMS AND EPITAPHS
AN ESSAY ON MAN
MORAL ESSAYS
SATIRES
THE DUNCIAD
THE ILIAD
THE ODYSSEY
The Poems
LIST OF POEMS IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER
LIST OF POEMS IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER
The Play
THREE HOURS AFTER MARRIAGE by John Gay, Alexander Pope and John Arbuthnot
The Biographies
ALEXANDER POPE by Leslie Stephen
THE AGE OF POPE by John Dennis
BRIEF LIFE OF POPE by Thomas De Quincey
Alexander Pope - Delphi Poets Series Page 200