The argument continues by asserting that the great genres like
epic and drama in which the Greeks excelled have a moral
civilizing function. There is no doubt that Pope strongly
identified himself with Horace in their common endeavour in
the humbler genre of the moral essay to fulfil the civilizing
office of the poet as the standard-bearer and guardian of
cultural values. The second thrust of the epistle is the
vindication of the Augustan aesthetic (and moral) values of
refinement, urbanity, and polish:
Wit grew polite, and numbers learned to flow.
Waller was smooth; but Dryden taught to join
The varying verse, the full-resounding line,
The long majestic march, and energy divine.
Though still some traces of our rustic vein
And splayfoot verse remained, and will remain.
Late, very late, correctness grew our care,
When the tired nation breathed from civil war.
(ll. 266–73)This part of the Augustan equation is also made in all
seriousness.
It may seem ironic that neither Horace nor Pope wrote in
either of the great genres, tragedy or epic. Augustus himself, it
may be inferred, believed that Horace had an epic subject for
we find the poet repeatedly declining to sing Caesar’s
achievements, alleging lack of proper talent so to do. The
Augustan aspiration for a national epic may be though to
have been fulfilled in Rome by Virgil’s Aeneid. But for Pope,
feeling as he did about the state of Britain, the contemporary
world offered no subject about which he felt a deep
conviction, so that he only toyed with the Brutus legend late
in life and the great Augustan poem of his dreams never
materialized. The nearest he came to it is perhaps the epic
satire of The Dunciad.
THE TEXTPope’s poems were published in many editions in his lifetime;
there are over fifteen, for example, of An Essay on Criticism
(first published in 1711), and even four of a late poem like the