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Pope and “The Weighty Bullion of Dr. Donne's Satires”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Ian Jack
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Extract

Pope's debt to Dryden, which is at once immense and unmistakable' has tended to obscure his relation to earlier English satirists. But since in the Imitations of Horace and the Moral Essays he was practising a genre untouched by Dryden—satura, the formal verse satire without a plot—it is reasonable to suppose that Pope owed something to other English satirists. There is evidence that he regarded himself as having a place in an English tradition of formal verse satire. When he came on a copy of Hall's Satires late in life, “he wished that he had seen them sooner”; and according to Warburton he intended to imitate “two or three” of Hall's satires. He was interested in Rochester and Oldham. He read, of course, Love of Fame, The Universal Passion; Young's “characteristical Satires” were no doubt partly responsible for turning his own thoughts in the direction of epistolary satire.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 66 , Issue 6 , December 1951 , pp. 1009 - 1022
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1951

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References

Note 1 in page 1009 Johnson's Lives of the English Poets, ed. G. Birkbeck Hill, iii, 251.

Note 2 in page 1009 Work (1770), iv, 240. Not in the ed. of 1751.

Note 3 in page 1009 Elwin-Courthope comment that the fact that line 78 in Pope's final version of Donne's second satire, together “with two or three others in the Satire, is transferred unaltered from Donne, ... shows how firmly Pope's style is rooted in the genius of the English language” (iii, 430 n. 2). I agree with this conclusion. But the number of lines which Pope takes over is larger than this. In his early version of II Pope retains 22 of Donne's 112 lines either unchanged or with very slight alterations (e.g., “That 'scuse for writing, and for writing ill,” 1.24, is changed to “Excuse for writing and for writeing ill,” 1.32. In the later version he retains 12/112. In his imitation of IV he keeps 18/244. The evidence of retained rhymes, for what it is worth, confirms the relations to Donne suggested by these numbers. In his early version of II Pope keeps 30/56 of Donne's pairs of rhymes: in the later version 20/56. In his version of IV he has 16/122. Clearly the early version of 77 is the nearest to Donne of the three, while IV is much further from its original than even the later version of II. It is because evidence of this sort is not of very great value, however, that I have written this paper to make the comparison in a more illuminating way.

Note 4 in page 1010 All my quotations are from Vol. iv of the Twickenham edition, ed. John Butt. I cite Pope's text of Donne, as given by Butt, without mention of differences between it and Grierson. Unless otherwise mentioned, all references to Pope's imitation of II are to the later version.

Note 5 in page 1011 Essays, ed. W. P. Ker, ii, 101–102.

Note 6 in page 1011 L'art poétique, i, 111–112.

Note 7 in page 1011 “Most of the pieces which are usually produced upon this plan [that of the moral epistle], rather give one an image of Lucilius, than of Horace: the authors of them seem to mistake the aukward negligence of the favorite of Scipio, for the easy air of the friend of Maecenas.” The Letters of Sir Thomas Fitzosborne [by William Melmoth], 4th ed. (1754), Letter xxxvii.

Note 8 in page 1011 Pope 37 (“Cry” for “Sir”).

Note 9 in page 1011 Pope 105 (“all our Edwards”).

Note 10 in page 1011 Pope 60 (“wooe”).

Note 11 in page 1012 Pope 59 (“Scots” for “men”).

Note 12 in page 1012 20–23. As often, pope here uses italics to emphasize the pattern of his rhetoric.

Note 13 in page 1013 The Letters of Sir Thomas Filzosborne, Letter xxxvii.

Note 14 in page 1014 Spence's Anecdotes, ed. Singer (1820), p. 1.

Note 15 in page 1014 Compare the severe judgment which Pope passed on gentlemen-poets in general, thinking particularly of Crashaw: “All that regards design, form, fable, which is the soul of poetry; all that concerns exactness, or consent of parts, which is the body, will probably be wanting ...” Elwin-Courthope, Works, vi, 116.

Note 16 in page 1015 “On Writing and Books,” xxxiv, in the Works (1764), ii, 178.

Note 17 in page 1015 He retained Donne's concise “Wants reach all states” (iv.184; Pope 224).

Note 18 in page 1015 132–133.1 have italicized the last word.

Note 19 in page 1015 My italics. Donne has: “He like a privileg'd spie, whom nothing can/Discredit...” (121–122).

Note 20 in page 1016 Johnson's Lives, I, 26.

Note 21 in page 1016 ii.77–78. Pope has: “Till like the Sea, they compass all the land, / From Scots to Wight, from Mount to Dover Strand” (85–86).

Note 22 in page 1017 ii.58. Pope: “The soft Iab'rinth of a Lady's ear” (55).

Note 23 in page 1017 iv.163–164. Pope: “O ray fair Mistress, Truth! Shall I quit thee, / For huffing, braggart, puft Nobility?” (200–201).

Note 24 in page 1017 The Poems of John Donne (Oxford, 1912), ii, 117.

Note 25 in page 1017 “Yet like the Papists is the Poets state, / Poor and disarm'd, and hardly worth your hate” (11–12). Cf. The Second Epistle of the Second Book of Horace, imitated by Mr. Pope, p. 67.

Note 26 in page 1018 Cf. A n Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnol, 318.

Note 27 in page 1018 Elwin-Courthope, Works, vi, 62. Cited by Butt in a note to iv.126–129, where Pope takes the image over from Donne 94–96.

Note 28 in page 1018 Anecdotes, p. 136.

Note 29 in page 1020 iv.73–74. Pope:

Squeaks like a high-stretch'd Lutestring, and replies:
“Oh 'tis the sweetest of all earthly things
To gaze on Princes, and to talk of Kings I (99–101)

Note 30 in page 1020 Warburton printed Parnell's version of Donne's Satyre III (Works, 1751, iv, 247–253) to show the superiority of Pope's versions. In nothing is Parnell's inferiority more evident than in his unwillingness to retain Donne's audacious imagery unweakened. He has also a tendency to step into too high a style. It is interesting to note that Warburton, writing in the middle of the eighteenth century, calls Donne's Satyre III “the noblest Work not only of This, but perhaps of any satiric Poet” (p. 247). The subject of the Satire is no doubt largely responsible for his enthusiasm.

Note 31 in page 1021 He uses the word “Strumpet” at iv.148.

Note 32 in page 1021 iv.117–118. Pope: “Like a big Wife at sight of loathsome Meat, / Ready to cast, I yawn, I sigh, and sweat” (156–157).

Note 33 in page 1021 iv.33–34; Pope 42 and 45.

Note 34 in page 1021 iv. 211. Johnson says that the singular “Folk” “is now used oray in familiar or burlesque language” (Dictionary). The plural is yet more familiar.

Note 35 in page 1021 Pope: “Prodigious! how the Things Protest, Protest” (255).

Note 36 in page 1021 iv. 278; iv. 213; iv. 209; iv. 171; ii. 47; iv. 263; ii. 82; iv. 153; ii. 87.

Note 37 in page 1022 In judging that Donne's “Epistles, Metempsychosis, and Satires” were “his best things” (Spence, p. 144) Pope was obviously influenced by the fact that these were the poems most similar in intention to his own work.

Note 38 in page 1022 I wish to thank my wife for helping me to arrange the materials in this paper. The phrase quoted in the title occurs in Joseph Warton's Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope, 4th ed. (1782), ii, 353.