Alexander Pope: Selected Poetry and Prose

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Critical commentary GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS IN JUDGING POPE The best commentary upon the poems of Pope is to be found in Dr Johns ...

volume was not published until after the Life in 1782 (probably because of the hostile reception accorded to the first) but alth ...

In English the three great poets of the sublime and the pathetic are Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton. The attitudes in the dedi ...

and niggardly encomium to say he is the great poet of reason, the first of ethical authors in verse?^4 The final thought with wh ...

Can there be a hierarchy of subjects and kinds? Did Pope suppress his imaginative side? Did he make an inferior choice in concen ...

often illustrate, indirectly, that imagination has as much play in these works as in ‘Eloisa’ and ‘Windsor Forest’. Judgement in ...

manuscript containing earlier versions of several passages of the Iliad, one of which is the famous ‘nightpiece’ included in thi ...

The changes he made give a sharper idea of the moon shining in darkness. Refulgent is not simply a dignified Latinism, for it ap ...

improves upon ‘glow’ by sharpening the connection between the moon and the moonlit planets. (The fact that the planets do not re ...

glory’, recalling a phrase rejected in the second couplet, ‘shoots a flood’. A final change to ‘Then shine the vales’ improves f ...

So many flames before proud Ilion blaze, And lighten glimmering Xanthus with their rays. The long reflections of the distant fir ...

may be deduced here shows at work all the faculties that in Johnson’s analysis constitute Pope’s genius, in particular what he h ...

Homer and its allusive character can serve to illuminate general characteristics of Pope’s poetry. In the relation to Dryden, an ...

Virgilian Latinate elegance was closer to the aspirations of his age than the simpler style of the original Greek. Pope was stee ...

fade away and are dead. Therefore let us with all speed give up this quarrel and let the mortals fight their own battles. Homer, ...

for its sweet melody. ‘His version may be said to have tuned the English tongue.’ This may be the point at which to cite his jud ...

translator some difficulty so that signs of strain are evident. Yet in the fabulous world of Ulysses’ adventures, Pope is thorou ...

creation of the divine machinery (especially in the beautiful description of the sylphs at canto II, 55ff) and in the judicious ...

wit delights in the happy combination of dissimilar images. The effect of the wit can be subtle and various. It seems to be pure ...