‘Imitation of Horace’ addressed to Bolingbroke c. 1737. Pope
published his Works in 1717 and took up the task again in
- Temperamentally he was a perfectionist, as an artist his
method was perpetually to refine his first thoughts (see
Critical commentary, pp. 218–23), and as a professional man
of letters he had an intense concern for his reputation. All
these factors led him to take an active interest in successive
editions of his poems, which he constantly revised.
Sometimes the changes are major. The Rape of the Lock
was expanded from two to five cantos between the first and
second editions, and the speech of Clarissa in canto V was not
added until 1717. The ‘Epistle to a lady’ was considerably
expanded in later editions. The Dunciad was radically
rewritten with a new hero and the addition of a fourth book
in 1743.
In most other poems there are some changes, and even
though the general reader might consider the majority of
them to be minor, since these later revisions have usually been
incorporated into the text, it should be borne in mind that the
dates of composition and publication given after each poem
cannot be taken as absolute.
In his own arrangement of the poems, Pope did not follow
a strict chronological plan, but grouped together, for example,
the Epistles to Several Persons (later to be called The Moral
Essays) and The Imitations of Horace without regard to dates
of publication. Editors have generally followed his example
here. The order of the poems in this selection is the traditional
one, roughly but not strictly chronological. Readers assessing
the shape of Pope’s career should note that, although all the
extracts from The Dunciad are placed at the end of this
volume since they are taken from the substantially revised
edition of 1743, the first Dunciad appeared in 1728 not long
after the completion of the Homer translation.
In his last years and in declining health Pope fell under the
influence of William Warburton, who prevailed upon him to
make changes in some of his texts and whom Pope made his
literary executor. After the poet’s death, Warburton published
an influential edition of his Works in 1751. The influence of
Warburton on the text of Pope has only recently been
unscrambled by the editors of the Twickenham edition, which