Critical commentary
GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS IN JUDGING POPEThe best commentary upon the poems of Pope is to be found
in Dr Johnson’s Life of Pope; this is the ideal starting point
for the student of Pope and it is the one work to which the
reader of Pope will constantly return. Modern scholarship has
filled in the details of Pope’s life and the social background to
his poems, but no other account of the life and writings can
rival Johnson’s for its critical authority. The reader may often
be stimulated to dissent, but is invariably brought to what
time has proved to be central issues of the poetry. What was
said of An Essay on Criticism by Johnson may with equal
propriety be applied to his own Life of Pope: it is
a work which displays such extent of comprehension, such
nicety of distinction, such acquaintance with mankind, and
such knowledge both of ancient and modern learning, as
are not often attained by the maturest age and longest
experience.^1The Life was written in the maturity of Johnson’s experience
and came out in 1781 by which time Pope had been dead for
almost forty years and a critical debate about his poems had
long been engaged. Johnson was of course fully aware of this
debate and in particular of the critical assessment of Joseph
Warton in An Essay on the Writings and Genius of Pope, the
first volume of which had appeared in 1756. The second