“The heights were within Pope’s reach, and he reached them.” Justify and criticise
“The heights were within Pope’s reach, and he reached them.” Justify and criticise
According to Mathew Arnold, Pope is a classic of prose. He is to be praised for those qualities which we associate with good prose. These qualities are intellectualism, balance, grace and realism. Pope has all these and he has also precision which is the hallmark of good prose. As a literary man Pope represents understanding as opposed to imagination, which according to Wordsworth, is the indispensable quality of Poetry. There is in Pope’s poetic work a happy union of clear thinking and understanding, with clarity and accuracy of expression, and the pleasure which the poetry of Pope gives the reader is primarily due to its intellectual quality and not due to any genuine poetic substance.
Whereas the poetry of Wordsworth, Milton, or Shakespeare is ‘eternal’ as it tells us things which are true for all times, the poetry of Pope tells us what the age wished to hear. It is related to contemporary theme and atmosphere. We find strength and inspiration in poets writing universal poetry, but amusement and instruction in Pope.
The larger part of Pope’s work is of a didactic and moral nature. He wants to reform and correct. So he is often satirical. Pope was no doubt a man of genius, a poet of fancy, and he possessed two of the qualifications necessary for a poet: (1) vivid expression of his actual subjects, and (2) artistic use of the metre employed by him. Pope cannot lay claim to “poetic transcendency,” but his extraordinary felicity of expression, and his wonderful command of the metre which he employed cannot be challenged, and therefore it is absurd to deny poetry to Pope.
Pope had invention, imagination and judgment. He had ‘Imagination’ which strongly impresses on the writer’s mind, and enables him to convey to the reader, the various forms of nature, incidents of life and energies of passion. He had judgement which selects from life or nature what the present purpose requires, and by separating the essence of things from its concomitants, often makes the representation more powerful than the reality. And he had colours of language always before him ready to decorate his matter with every grace of elegant expression, as when he accommodates his diction to the wonderful multiplicity of Homer’s sentiments and descriptions.
According to Johnson, among the excellences of Pope must be mentioned the melody of his metre, for poetical expression includes sound as well as meaning. He obtained possession of so many beauties of speech. That he gleaned from authors, obscure as well as eminent, what he thought brilliant or useful, and preserved it all in a regular collection. ‘New sentiments and new images others may produce, but to attempt any further improvement of versification will be dangerous. Art and diligence have now done their best, and what shall be added will be the effort of tedious toil and needless curiosity.
English – Important links
- Hero of ‘Paradise Lost’ | Hero of Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’ | Who is the hero of ‘Paradise Lost’
- A note on Milton’s Grand style
- Paradise Lost as a classical Epic | How does Milton employ classical epic convention in his Invocation in paradise last Book.
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