Alender Pope as the Disciple of Dryden
We have to deal now with Pope as a satirist. Pope is the disciple of Dryden and the best qualities of the Drydenic satire, in both form and matter, are reproduced in his works, accompanied by special attributes of his own. Like Shakespeare, Pope so improved all he borrowed that he has in some instances actually received credit for inventing what he only took from his great master. Pope was more of a refiner and polisher of telling satiric forms which Dryden had in the first instance employed them as an original inventor.
It would be a rather difficult task to mention all the types of satire effected by this marvellously acute and variously cultured poet. There are few amongst the principal forms which he has not essayed. In spirit he is more pungent and sarcastic, more acidulous and malicious, than the large-hearted and generous-souled Dryden. In his satire, therefore, we find a greater element of personal dislike and contempt than in the case of the other. While satire is present more or less in nearly all Pope's verse there are certain compositions where it may be said to be the outstanding quality. These are his 'Satires' among which should of course be included "The Prologue' and 'The Epilogue' as well as the 'Moral Essay,' and finally the 'Dunciad'. These comprise the best of his professed satires. His 'Satires and Epistles of Horace Imitated' are supposed be to an adaptation to to Engligh scenes, sympathies, sentiments, and surroundings of the Roman poet's characteristic style. Though Pope has quite as many points of affinity with Juvena. as with Horace, the adaptation and transference of the local atmosphere from Tiber to Thames is managed with extraordinary skill. The 'Satires' are written from the point of view of opposition to Sir Robert Walpole, the great W Whig minister. They display the concentrated essence of bitterness toward the ministerial policy. As Minto tersely puts it, we see gathered up in them the worst that was thought and said about the government and court-party when men's minds were heated almost to the point of civil war. For caustic bitterness, sustained but polished irony, and merciless sarcastic malice, the characters of Attcus (Addison), Bufo, and Sporous have never been surpassed in the literature of political and social criticism.
There is a view that Pope's motives for writing the 'Dunciad' were purely spiteful and personal; that as soon as hands were free from his shis translation of Homer, and his independence secured by the profits of that work he proceeded to settle old scores with those who had not spoken as favourably as he liked about his poetry. There is strong justification for this view in the fact that the most prominent persons ridiculed in the 'Dunciad' can be shown to have given him offence. Theobald, the original hero of the poem, had criticised Pope's edition of Shakespeare rather insolently. Gibber had ridiculed a play in which Pope in his earlier days had some share. Dennis was an old enemy. Lintot, the publisher, had accused him of unfair practices in the division of the profits of the 'Odyssey' which proved less successful than the 'Iliad'.
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