Alexander Pope, best known for popularizing the heroic couplet, caught my eye in an English literature class at Michigan State University in the mid-1960s.
I was more interested in reading Pope at the time than learning about Pope because he clearly knew how to do what I call “turn a word”. That is, write a string of words that captures your attention and conveys a thought so deep that it cannot be ignored.
Pope was a master in this art of writing. Perhaps you have read or heard these gems:
A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
Fools rush where angels fear to tread.
To err is human, to forgive divine.
The ends must justify the means.
More than one author has rewritten these thoughts and claimed them for monetary gain. Each of these thoughts might remind us of a startling truth: Someone said it first.
Some experts say that William Shakespeare of England is the most widely read and quoted author in history. Many suggest that the Holy Bible is the second. It has been said that British author Agatha Christie’s books have only outsold Shakespeare and the Bible.
Alexander Pope may not have sold as many books, but he has been cited as the second most cited writer in the English language, after William Shakespeare.
Pope (1688-1744), the master of the heroic couplet, is generally regarded as the greatest English poet of the early eighteenth century. He was widely known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer.
For the uninitiated, the heroic couplet is a pair of rhyming iambic pentameters. Iambic is a verse using iambs, and an iamb is a metric foot consisting of a short (or unstressed) syllable followed by a long (or stressed) syllable. So there you have it, the learning reappears on your computer monitor.
The heading of this article is an example of Pope’s heroic couplet: A little learning is a dangerous thing, drink deeply or don’t taste Pierian’s fountain.
Read for a moment, appreciate how good Pope and his verses were, and understand why it would come to my attention:
On bribery: Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love should never be sold.
About the churches: Whoever builds a church for God, and not for Fame, will never mark the marble with his Name.
About curiosity: Someone who is too wise an observer of the affairs of others, like someone who is too curious in observing the work of bees, will often be piqued by their curiosity.
On the Devil: Satan is now wiser than before, and tempts by enriching instead of impoverishing.
On education: This education forms the common mind. Just as the branch is bent, the tree is leaning.
On expectation: Blessed is he who does not expect anything because he will never be disappointed.
On fashion: don’t be the first to try the new, and don’t be the last to throw out the old.
About the gossip: And all those who told it added something new, and all those who heard it added to it too.
About the trial: It is with our trials like our watches, none of them are the same, however, each one believes his own.
About order: Order is the first law of Heaven; and this I confess, Some are and must be greater than the rest.
On pride: What governs the weak head with the strongest partiality, It is pride, the infallible vice of fools.
About the proverbs: Hope sprouts eternally in the human chest, Man is never, but always to be blessed.
On providence: Destroy all creatures for your sport or taste, But cry, if man is unhappy, God is unjust.
On the right: Always do the right thing. That will please some people and amaze the rest.
On self-knowledge: do not trust yourself, but your defects to know, make use of all friends and all enemies.
Of self-sacrifice: Many men have been able to do a wise thing, more a cunning thing, but very few a generous thing.
Here’s the message: great writing and great writers are timeless for those who seek knowledge and truth. If you don’t care about either, then it doesn’t matter. For example:
If today’s generation is on spring break at the beach, drinking and doing drugs, and running around half naked ready to fuck each other, that’s their business and their perfect right.
My suspicion is that their personal life is so devoid of anything significant that they must put on a public display to convince themselves that they are having a life experience. In their effort to elevate superficiality into an art form, they occasionally succeed.
Now back to something worth examining, the life of Alexander Pope, who should inspire not only poets and writers, but also those with disabilities.
Pope, born in London, was the son of a linen merchant and his wife. Because they were Roman Catholics, he grew up having to deal with the Church of England, which forbade Catholics from teaching on pain of life imprisonment.
His aunt taught him to read and he was educated in two clandestine Catholic schools that, although illegal, were tolerated in some areas.
Pope suffered from Pott’s disease, a form of tuberculosis that affects the spine. This stunted his growth and deformed his body, perhaps ending his life at age 56. He was only 4 feet 6 inches and apparently not very attractive, which may explain why he never married.
Despite his inauspicious start in life, Louis Kronenberger in “Alexander Pope Selected Works” says: “In terms of money and fame, Pope was probably the most successful English poet who ever lived. No other in his day, few in any day. it had as many readers or received almost universal acclaim.”
Pope’s works would not make him forgotten, but the growth of romanticism in the late eighteenth century would. Joseph Warton would deny that Pope was ever a “true” and dismiss him as merely a “witty man” and a “sensible man”, thus hastening the demise of the “Age of the Pope”.
It would take until the 1930s to rediscover Alexander Pope and his works. By posting this article to Internet directories, we hope that Alexander Pope and his works will once again take their rightful place among the great works of history. With apologies to a great writer:
Then Alexander Pope, who was soon forgotten,
He could finally become a true giant.
Copyright © 2007 Ed Bagley