in which wit is not indulged in to delight itself but is subject to
restraint and serves a moral purpose. In pursuit of such an ideal
medium, Pope developed the moral essay, a blend of satire and
panegyric, in which the positive healing element is fully explicit
as it often is in the satires and epistles of Horace. Both poets
characteristically conduct a moral dialogue, usually with a
specific addressee, and through the addressee with the reader.
Poet, addressee, and reader are all implicated in a set of
civilized values that are defined, asserted, and represented in
the style and conduct of the poem.
The portrait of Chloe from the ‘Epistle to a lady’ (ll. 157–80)
may serve as an example. After some of the more obvious targets
have been attacked, the addressee (Martha Blount) interjects:
‘Yet Chloe sure was formed without a spot?’to which the poet replies:
Nature in her then erred not, but forgot.In this portrait is explicitly played out a conflict that underlies
Pope’s social satire generally, the opposition between the
social being and the spontaneous natural self. The use of
‘formed’ is not incidental, indicating the social conditioning
of which women in the highly formalized society of his day
were the principal victims. Addressing Martha in the ‘Epistle
to Miss Blount with the works of Voiture’, he had written:
Too much your sex is by their forms confined,
Severe to all but most to womankind.
(ll. 31–2)In the later epistle Martha extends her question and Pope
extends his reply:
‘With every pleasing, every prudent part,
Say, what can Chloe want?’—She wants a heart.The two voices continue as the poet takes over from Martha
(his own fictional convenience in the epistle anyway). Here is
the voice supporting the thesis that Chloe is virtuous:
She speaks, behaves, and acts just as she ought...
So very reasonable, so unmoved...