WAS POPE A POET?

Till the end of the nineteenth century the question whether Pope was a poet was hotly
debated.Wordsworth and Coleridge said that he had founded a mechanical school of poetry
and originated the classic of our prose. Even in the twentieth century he has been viewed in
different ways. Some critics say that he is not even a poet. The other say that he has
written a classical prose. In fact he has figured as one who left the free air of heaven for the
atmosphere of the coffee house as the first to introduce a mechanical standard of poetry,
owing its acceptance to the prosaic tone of the day.
It is obvious that his achievements do not belong to the very high forms of poetry. He has
no broad beneficiation of Shakespeare, nor the high sounded grandeur of Milton, nor does
he have the music of Shelley. But it is useless to condemn him because he was not
somebody else. He is a great poet because of the following reasons:
1. As a literary man Pope represents precision and accuracy and graceful expression and as
a poet—if he is recognized as a poet—he represents understanding as opposed to
imagination.Wordsworth says that imagination is the indispensable quality of poetry.
There is in Pope’s work a happy union of clear thinking and understanding with clarity and
accuracy of expression.
2. Among the great English poets who had preceded Pope, Chaucer was the painter of
actual life, Spenser of imaginative life, Shakespeare of ideal life, and Milton of moral and
spiritual life. It remained for Pope, says Lowell, to portray conventional life. He was
eminently fitted for this task because he was gifted with the power of intellectual
expression and perfect propriety of phrase.
3. “The Rape of the lock” is a perfect work in its kind; for wit and fancy and intention it has
never been surpassed. It is true that there is no inspiration in it. But for pure
entertainment it is unmatched. Lowell says that there are two types of poetry—one gives us
the message of the eternal, the other tells us what the age wishes to hear. Shakespeare,
Milton, and Wordsworth give us the message of eternal; Pope tells us of his in one and
amusement and instruction in the other. And we should be thankful for the both.
4. The greatest deficiencies of Pope as a poet are his lack of warmth and flight—warmth of
emotion and flight of imagination. These are serious deficiencies in his poetry. In spite of its
nationality, good sense and clarity it can never claim to be real genuine poetry. But Pope is
unique in his individuality. He is the greatest satirist of individual men. He has given the
finest expression to the life of the Court or the ball room. He has added more phrases of
language than any other poet but Shakespeare. If all these qualities make a man poet, pope
is certainly one. He is the founder of artificial style.
5. It is some time complained that pope did not give a single new thought to the world. But
originality does not mean expressing new thought always. Pope may not have given a new
thought to the world, but he clothed common thoughts with form, and gave them a vivid
and forceful expression.
6. Pope’s view of Nature is very different from what we understand by it.Wordsworth called
for ‘return to Nature’ while Pope asked ‘to follow Nature’. For Wordsworth Nature meant
the external face of the universe and those elements of human nature which are
uncorrupted by artificial civilization. For Pope Nature meant that which was rational and
was approved by tradition. Pope wanted men to live properly in civilized society, following
the rational principles of human conduct. For Wordsworth, poetry must be natural
spontaneous overflow of emotion. For pope, poetry must be rational, and extremes. Thus
Pope and Wordsworth both followed Nature but their conceptions of Nature were poles
apart.
Pope was the poet of the correctness, and sought to curb the wildness and disorder of
unbridled imagination. The Romantic and the Metaphysical poets had corrupted poetry by
indulging in extravagances and eccentricities.
To conclude, it would be incorrect to say that he was not a poet at all. He brought the form
of poetry to perfection, and thereby made his own contribution to poetry. His scope was
extremely limited but within these narrow limits how much has he done. His poetry does
not have anything which may enable our thoughts and feelings but it gives us a great deal
of pleasure. It may be “a miniature painting on two inches of ivory” but such painting also
has its own value. His poetry is the conventional poetry of conventional age but it is poetry
all the same.
There are occasional flashes of real poetry—like the description of sylphs—in his work,
which shows that he would have been a different poet in a different age. There is no reason
why we should not enjoy the conventional poetry of Pope. He has done so well, what he has
attempted to do that. In his own province, he stands unapproachably alone.