The Works of Alexander Pope Part 33

It must have been holiday time with him, notwithstanding, when the wife of Bath set out on one of her pilgrimages, and left him in peace at home.]

THE TEMPLE OF FAME

WRITTEN IN THE YEAR 1711.

THE TEMPLE OF FAME: A VISION.

By Mr. POPE.

8vo.

London: Printed for BERNARD LINTOTT, betwixt the two Temple Gates in Fleet Street. 1715.

This is the first edition. A second edition, which I have not seen, is advertised by Lintot in some of the lists of his publications. Dennis, in the Observations he put forth on the poem in 1717, asks Pope if there are no women who are worthy to appear in the Temple of Fame, and immediately adds, "Divers, he says, but he thought he should affront the modesty of the s.e.x in showing them there." The remark does not occur in the first edition, nor in the reprints of the poem in Pope's collected works, and it may, perhaps, have been taken from the second edition. As the production disappointed the expectations raised by the name of the author the sale was probably not large. The piece was included in the quarto of 1717, and in the editions of Lintot's Miscellanies which came out in 1727 and 1732, but was not in the editions of 1720 and 1722.

Lintot paid 32_l._ 5_s._ for the copyright on Feb. 1, 1715.

ADVERTIs.e.m.e.nT

The hint of the following piece was taken from Chaucer's House of Fame.

The design is in a manner entirely altered, the descriptions and most of the particular thoughts my own: yet I could not suffer it to be printed without this acknowledgment,[1] or think a concealment of this nature the less unfair for being common. The reader who would compare this with Chaucer, may begin with his third Book of Fame, there being nothing in the two first books that answers to their t.i.tle.[2] Whenever any hint is taken from him, the pa.s.sage itself is set down in the marginal notes.[3]

Some modern critics, from a pretended refinement of taste, have declared themselves unable to relish allegorical poems.[4] It is not easy to penetrate into the meaning of this criticism; for if fable be allowed one of the chief beauties, or, as Aristotle calls it, the very soul of poetry, it is hard to comprehend how that fable should be the less valuable for having a moral. The ancients constantly made use of allegories. My Lord Bacon has composed an express treatise in proof of this, ent.i.tled, The Wisdom of the Ancients; where the reader may see several particular fictions exemplified and explained with great clearness, judgment, and learning. The incidents, indeed, by which the allegory is conveyed, must be varied according to the different genius or manners of different times; and they should never be spun too long, or too much clogged with trivial circ.u.mstances, or little particularities. We find an uncommon charm in truth, when it is conveyed by this sideway to our understanding: and it is observable, that even in the most ignorant ages this way of writing has found reception. Almost all the poems in the old Provencal had this turn; and from these it was that Petrarch took the idea of his poetry. We have his Trionfi in this kind; and Boccace pursued in the same track. Soon after, Chaucer introduced it here, whose Romaunt of the Rose, Court of Love, Flower and the Leaf, House of Fame, and some others of his writings, are masterpieces of this sort. In epic poetry, it is true, too nice and exact a pursuit of the allegory is justly esteemed a fault; and Chaucer had the discernment to avoid it in his Knight's Tale, which was an attempt towards an epic poem. Ariosto, with less judgment, gave entirely into it in his Orlando; which, though carried to an excess, had yet so much reputation in Italy, that Ta.s.so (who reduced heroic poetry to the juster standard of the ancients) was forced to prefix to his work a scrupulous explanation of the allegory of it, to which the fable itself could scarce have directed his readers. Our countryman, Spenser, followed, whose poem is almost entirely allegorical, and imitates the manner of Ariosto rather than that of Ta.s.so. Upon the whole, one may observe this sort of writing, however discontinued of late, was in all times, so far from being rejected by the best poets, that some of them have rather erred by insisting on it too closely, and carrying it too far; and that to infer from thence that the allegory itself is vicious, is a presumptuous contradiction to the judgment and practice of the greatest geniuses, both ancient and modern.--POPE.

Pope, as he tells Steele in their correspondence (Nov. 16, 1712), had written the Temple of Fame two years before, that is, when he was only twenty-two years old, an early time of life for so much learning and so much observation as that work exhibits. It has, as Steele warmly declared, a "thousand beauties." Every part is splendid; there is great luxuriance of ornaments; the original vision of Chaucer was never denied to be much improved; the allegory is very skilfully continued, the imagery is properly selected and learnedly displayed; yet with all this comprehension of excellence, as its scene is laid in remote ages, and its sentiments, if the concluding paragraph be excepted, have little relation to general manners or common life, it never obtained much notice, but is turned silently over and seldom quoted or mentioned with either praise or blame.--JOHNSON.

It was, to the Italians we owed anything that could be called poetry, from whom Chaucer, imitated by Pope in this vision, copied largely, as _they_ are said to have done from the bards of Provence. But whatever Chaucer might copy from the Italians, yet the artful and entertaining plan of his Canterbury Tales was purely original and his own. This admirable piece, even exclusive of its poetry, is highly valuable, as it preserves to us the liveliest and exactest picture of the manners, customs, characters, and habits, of our forefathers, whom he has brought before our eyes acting as on a stage, suitably to their different orders and employments. With these portraits the driest antiquary must be delighted. By this plan, he has more judiciously connected these stories which the guests relate, than Boccace has done his novels, whom he has imitated, if not excelled, in the variety of the subjects of his tales.

It is a common mistake, that Chaucer's excellence lay in his manner of treating light and ridiculous subjects; for whoever will attentively consider the n.o.ble poem of Palamon and Arcite, will be convinced that he equally excels in the pathetic and the sublime. The House of Fame, as being merely descriptive, is of an inferior rank to those in Chaucer of the narrative kind, and which paint life and manners. The design is improved and heightened by the masterly hand of Pope. It is not improbable that this subject was suggested to our author, not only by Dryden's translations of Chaucer, of which Pope was so fond, but likewise by that celebrated paper of Addison, in the Tatler, called the Table of Fame, to which the great worthies of antiquity are introduced, and seated according to their respective merits and characters, and which was published some years before this poem was written. The six persons Pope thought proper to select as worthy to be placed on the highest seats of honour are Homer, Virgil, Pindar, Horace, Aristotle, Tully. It is observable that our author has omitted the great dramatic poets of Greece. Sophocles and Euripides deserved certainly an honourable niche in the Temple of Fame, as much as Pindar and Horace.

But the truth is it was not fas.h.i.+onable in Pope's time, nor among his acquaintance, attentively to study these poets. I own I have some particular reasons for thinking that he was not very conversant in this sort of composition, having no inclination to the drama. In a note on the third book of his Homer, where Helen points out to Priam the names and characters of the Grecian leaders from the walls of Troy, he observes, that several great poets have been engaged by the beauty of this pa.s.sage to an imitation of it. But who are the poets he enumerates on this occasion? Only Statius and Ta.s.so; the former of whom, in his seventh book, and the latter in his third, shows the forces and the commanders that invested the cities of Thebes and Jerusalem. Not a syllable is mentioned of that capital scene in the Phoenissae of Euripides, from the hundred and twentieth to the two hundredth line, where the old man, standing with Antigone on the walls of Thebes, marks out to her the various figures, habits, armour, and qualifications of each different warrior, in the most lively and picturesque manner, as they appear in the camp beneath them. In conclusion, we may observe that Pope's alterations of Chaucer are introduced with judgment and art, and that these alterations are more in number, and more important in conduct, than any Dryden has made of the same author.

The Temple of Fame was communicated to Steele, who entertained a high opinion of its beauties, and who conveyed it to Addison. Pope had ornamented the poem with the machinery of guardian angels, which he afterwards omitted. He speaks of his work with a diffidence uncommon in a young poet, and which does him credit. "No errors," he says to Steele, "are so trivial but they deserve to be mended. I could point you to several; but it is my business to be informed of those faults I do not know, and as for those I do, not to talk of them but to correct them.

You speak of that poem in a style I neither merit nor expect, but, I a.s.sure you, if you freely mark or dash out, I shall look upon your blots to be its greatest beauties,--I mean, if Mr. Addison and yourself should like it in the whole. I am afraid of nothing so much as to impose anything on the world which is unworthy its acceptance."--WARTON.

Chaucer's poem contains great strokes of Gothic imagination, yet bordering often on the most ideal and capricious extravagance. Pope has imitated this piece with his usual elegance of diction and harmony of versification; but, in the mean time, he has not only misrepresented the story, but marred the character of the poem. He has endeavoured to correct its extravagancies by new refinements and additions of another cast; but he did not consider that extravagancies are essential to a poem of such a structure, and even const.i.tute its beauties. An attempt to unite order and exactness of imagery with a subject formed on principles so professedly romantic and anomalous, is like giving Corinthian pillars to a Gothic palace. When I read Pope's elegant imitation of this piece, I think I am walking among the modern monuments unsuitably placed in Westminster Abbey.--T. WARTON.

Little can be added to T. Warton's masterly appreciation of the characteristic merit of this poem. May I be just allowed to mention, that there is less harmony of versification in this poem, than in most of the preceding, particularly the Rape of the Lock, Elegy to an Unfortunate Lady, and, above all, the Epistle of Eloisa. The pause is too generally at the end of the line, and on the fourth and fifth syllable. Pope bids

The Muses raise The golden trumpet of eternal praise.

Chaucer with a bolder personification sends for Eolus, "that king of Thrace," from "his cave of stone," to sound his "trump of gold." These circ.u.mstances may designate in some measure the character of either poem. I must confess I think there can be no comparison between the bold trump of Eolus which he set

To his mouth And blew it east, and west, and south, And north, as loud as any thunder,

and the delicate but less animated tone of the Muses in Pope.--BOWLES.

If Chaucer was indebted to any of the Italian poets for the idea of his House of Fame, it was to Petrarca, who in his Trionfo della Fama has introduced many of the most eminent characters of ancient times. It must however be observed, that the poem of Petrarca is extremely simple and inartificial, and consists only in supposing that the most celebrated men of ancient Greece and Rome pa.s.s in review before him; whilst that of Chaucer is the work of a powerful imagination, abounding with beautiful and lively descriptions, and forming a connected and consistent whole.

Pope's Temple of Fame is one of the n.o.blest, though earliest, productions of the author, displaying a fertile invention and an uncommon grandeur and facility of style. It is confessedly founded on Chaucer's House of Fame; but the design is greatly altered and improved, and many of the thoughts and descriptions are entirely his own; yet such is the coincidence and happy union of the work with its prototype, that it is almost impossible to distinguish those portions for which he is indebted to Chaucer from those of his own invention. The conclusion, as descriptive of his own feelings at an early period of his own life, is particularly interesting.--ROSCOE.

Chaucer's House of Fame is adorned with statues

Of all manner of minstrales, And gestours that tellen tales Both of weeping and of game.

Just such a gestour, or narrative poet, was Chaucer himself; for, as Warton has remarked, he excelled alike in the pathetic and the gay, and, if he was more admirable in one than in the other, his "tales of weeping" were superior to his "tales of game." None of our poets, except Shakespeare, can compete with him in versatility of genius. His numerous characters are conceived with equal truth and distinctness; his dialogue is lively and natural; his humour is sometimes broad, sometimes subtle, and always racy; his tenderness is unrivalled in its mingled depth, simplicity and refinement; his descriptions, whether serious or comic, have never been surpa.s.sed in ease and vividness. His pre-eminence appears the more conspicuous when we contrast his living strains with the feeble diffuse monotony of his successors and predecessors. He may be compared, says Thomas Warton, to a premature summer's day in an English spring. The autobiographical pa.s.sages in his works afford a glimpse of the varied tastes and pursuits which rendered him one of the most comprehensive writers in the world. His keen observation of mankind was blended with the plodding of a student. He tells us that he lived the life of a hermit, and was entirely ignorant of what was pa.s.sing among the neighbours who "dwelt almost at his door." His custom when the duties of the day were over was to withdraw to his house, and sit down "as dumb as any stone" to his books, till he was "dazed" with reading.

His love of nature could alone compete in intensity with his love of literature. The single thing which had power to entice him from the studies he held "in reverence" was the singing of birds and the blooming of flowers. The month of May had a peculiar fascination for him. "Then,"

he exclaims, "farewell my book," and transported by the opening beauties of the year he gave himself up to the exhilarating effects of renovated nature. The "flower of flowers," in his eyes, was the daisy, and there was never a morning that he was not out at dawn in the meadows, kneeling on the "soft, sweet gra.s.s," and watching his little favourite unclose its petals to the sun. In the evening he returned to see the daisies "go to rest," and no sooner were they shut up than he hastened home to bed, that he might be awake in time to witness the renewal of the scene. The sight was to him so "blissful" that it "softened all his sorrow," nor did the commonness of the occurrence abate the charm. He protests that he still feels within him the fire which impelled him to rise with glad devotion before break of day that he might behold the resurrection of his cherished flower, and do it reverence; for the friendly daisy was--

Ever alike fair and fresh of hue, And I love it, and ever alike new, And ever shall till that mine hearte die.

These traits present a charming picture of the man, and they are enhanced by the modesty which accompanied his greatness. He always speaks of his writings with unaffected humility, as those of a person who from taste was a diligent cultivator of poetry without possessing the faculty to become a worthy poet.

The House of Fame cannot be ranked with Chaucer's best productions. The incidents are supposed to pa.s.s in a dream, which was his ordinary plan for avoiding the infringement of probability when he exchanged terrestrial realities for the visions of fancy. He repeatedly in his works does homage to the happy influence of love. He maintained that it was the parent of the choicest qualities among mankind, though he sometimes adulterates his loftier sentiments by intermingling voluptuous pa.s.sion with the pure affections of the heart,--a defect which was usual with the mediaeval "gestours." He reverts in the House of Fame to his favourite theme, and the first book is taken up with a description of the temple of Venus. The entire edifice was of gla.s.s that was radiant with paintings representing subjects from Ovid and Virgil. Chaucer flourished in the finest period of Gothic architecture, when the "storied windows richly dight" were the delight of the age, and his detailed enumeration of the pictured incidents were not, to his contemporaries, the dry catalogue they may appear to us. After examining the marvellous gallery, he walks out of the building to seek for some one to inform him in what country he may be. He finds that the surrounding district is a desert as far as the eye can reach, without house, tree, herbage, or living creature, till gazing upwards he beholds an eagle aloft in the sky.

It was of gold, and shone so bright That never saw men such a sight, But if the heaven had ywon All new of G.o.d another sun.

The book concludes with the announcement that the gorgeous eagle began somewhat to descend, and this is followed in the second book by the bird catching sight of Chaucer, and stooping upon him with the rapidity of lightning. In an instant it catches him up in its claws, and "as lightly as if he was a lark" soars with him into the clouds. He swoons with fright, and is restored to consciousness by the eagle calling him by name, and rebuking him for his fears. Having calmed him, the bird informs him why he has been sent to fetch him, and bear him aloft into the skies. Chaucer more than once confesses that he was not framed to win affection. He says he did "not dare to love for his unlikeliness,"

and that he might "go in the dance" with those whom it had not been Cupid's pleasure to prosper. Yet his quick and glowing sympathies had led him to employ his genius in celebrating a blessing of which he had tasted so sparingly, and he is now told that his disinterested service to Venus and Cupid, in devoting the hours of night to composing poems on the histories of lovers till his head aches, has attracted the notice of Jupiter, who intends to reward him by admitting him to a view of the palace of Fame. The eagle continues rising upwards with his burthen, and expounds to Chaucer as they go the situation of the building, and the means by which everything said and done on earth is known in the distant sanctuary of the G.o.ddess. Arrived there, the winged messenger of Jupiter sets the poet down, and bidding him farewell, expresses a hope that the G.o.d of heaven will send him grace to learn some good from the scenes which are about to be unveiled to him. The third book contains the account of the House of Fame, and the House of Rumour, and despite the previous announcement of the extraordinary disclosures which await him, Chaucer has copied several of his leading ideas from Ovid and Virgil. In the House of Fame he witnesses the caprice with which the G.o.ddess dispenses reputation and disgrace; and in the House of Rumour he learns that nothing can exceed the lying and deception which are practised by mercenary ecclesiastics for the sake of lucre. His honest nature and penetrating understanding repudiated the impostures of the Romish church, and it was the main lesson which he seemed to wish to inculcate in his poem.

It is stated by Pope in his prefatory advertis.e.m.e.nt that the House of Fame had only supplied him with the "hint" for the Temple of Fame, that "the design was entirely altered," and that "the descriptions, and most of the particular thoughts, were his own." Bowles says that "Pope seems unwilling to confess all he owes to Chaucer," and that his language would "lead us to conclude that the chief merit of the arrangement and imagination belonged to himself," whereas he is indebted to his predecessor for "what is most poetical in the whole composition." Pope cannot be accused of concealing his obligations to the House of Fame, for he has fairly specified them in his notes, but he extremely underrated the extent to which he borrowed from it when he fancied that his general outline was different, and "most of the particular thoughts entirely new." The fertility of invention ascribed to him by Roscoe, and which he, in some degree, challenges for himself, is the last praise he can claim. Every portion of the conception which has a touch of creative power is found in Chaucer, together with the largest part of what is good in the filling up. High authorities differ as to the effect of Pope's additions and variations. Thomas Warton p.r.o.nounced that "the character of the poem was marred," and Bowles endorsed the criticism.

Johnson, on the other hand, a.s.serts that "the original vision was never denied to be much improved," and he had Joseph Warton, Roscoe, and Campbell on his side. "Much of Chaucer's fantastic matter," says Campbell, "has been judiciously omitted by Pope, who at the same time has clothed the best ideas of the old poem in spirited numbers and expression. Chaucer supposes himself to be s.n.a.t.c.hed up to heaven by a large eagle, who addresses him in the name of St. James and the Virgin Mary. In Pope, the philosophy of fame comes with much more propriety from the poet himself than from the beak of a talkative eagle."[5] The introduction of the majestic eagle, its tremendous swoop when it pounces on the lonely wanderer, the terror produced by the first stage of the flight, and the animated dialogue in the second stage, is the most striking portion of Chaucer's vision. The philosophic discourse of the bird is not inconsistent with the wild imaginings of a dream. "Fantastic matter" is here the most natural, and keeps up an illusion which disappears in the formal composition of Pope. The advantage of modern language and versification would have rendered it easy for a man less gifted than him to improve on isolated pa.s.sages, but the free fancy and picturesqueness of Chaucer are wanting. The romance which const.i.tutes the truth and charm of the original dream is replaced by a scene of frigid tameness; and Johnson, while declaring that every part of the remodelled piece was splendid, is compelled to admit that it is turned silently over and takes no hold on the mind. Dullness is a fatal innovation which is poorly compensated by the greater polish of the style, and harmony of the verse.

The Temple of Fame suffered from a cause which deteriorated much of Pope's early poetry,--the notion that the n.o.blest exercise of mind was to magnify the ancients, and reproduce their ideas. The epic poem he commenced at thirteen was naturally a school-boy's "slavish imitation"

of Greek and Latin authors.[6] A magnificent modern literature, marked by the strongest lines of native vigour and masculine independence, might have been expected, as he grew acquainted with it, to expand his taste. This effect did not ensue. Led astray by the false conventional canons of hacknied criticism, he clung to his early prejudices, and, regardless of the splendid names which gave the lie to his theory, he could say, at the age of thirty, in the preface to his works, "All that is left us is to recommend our productions by the imitation of the ancients." He told Spence that he should certainly have tried his hand upon a second epic if he had not translated the Iliad, and this epic, in its main characteristics, would not have differed much from his translation. "I should have sat down to it," he said, "with this advantage, that I had been nursed up in Homer and Virgil."[7] He once intended to take the Corinthian Timoleon for his hero; and scene, manners, personages, machinery, and sentiments would all have been as Greek as they could be made by an imitator who had not entered deeply into the spirit of cla.s.sic writers and times. The everlasting interest attached to the Iliad,--to a poem original and national, reflecting the inst.i.tutions, customs, feelings, and beliefs of its era,--would, he thought, be extended to a modern duplicate, in which every one of these qualities would have been reversed. "The less we copy the ancients,"

said Dr. Young, "we shall resemble them the more." The undue exaltation of antiquity is complete in the Temple of Fame. No English king, warrior, statesman, or patriot; no Christian martyr or evangeliser; no poet or philosopher was deemed worthy to be ranked with the men of old.

The fict.i.tious phantoms of heathen mythology, the heroes of decayed empires, and the authors whose works are in dead languages, are the sole immortals of Pope. Within the limits of his narrow world several of his names appear to have been selected at random, and others are applauded upon mistaken principles. He extols the virtue of Brutus, whose chief glory was to have plotted the death of his preserver, patron, and friend. Nations do not need, and virtue disowns the patriotism which manifests itself in ingrat.i.tude, treachery, and murder. Pope's admiration of tyrannicides even led him to celebrate Timoleon for killing his brother, notwithstanding that Timoleon had forfeited his claim to the panegyric by bitterly repenting his crime. To consecrate political a.s.sa.s.sinations is to put the lives of rulers at the mercy of any individual who conceives their policy to be mischievous. In short, the portion of the Temple of Fame which was not directly borrowed from Chaucer is merely a school-boy's theme in verse. The manner in which Pope sets forth his worthies is not, for him, felicitous. His portraits are nearly all faint and feeble sketches, without distinctness of outline, individuality of feature, or brilliancy of colouring.

The contemporary literature of the middle ages could not compete with the cla.s.sical masterpieces, and Chaucer might have been justified in peopling his House of Fame with ancients alone. But he does not believe that genius and grandeur expired with the Romans. He has faith in authors whose light has long since been dimmed or extinguished, and confidently ranks such writers as Guido de Columpnis and Geoffrey of Monmouth with the loftiest Greek and Latin names. The statues of minstrel bards, musicians, and professors of magic adorn the exterior of the palace; the wall within is crowded with heralds, and on their coats are embroidered the armorial ensigns of all the persons who had been famous in Europe, Asia, and Africa since chivalry began. Everywhere we have the true reflection of the world in which Chaucer lived. His narrative represents the fourteenth century, its actual pursuits and genuine tastes, while the modernised version of Pope is stripped of circ.u.mstantial realities, and exhibits only an impa.s.sive, artificial pedantry.

The architecture of Pope's Temple and Chaucer's House presents the same difference which distinguishes the respective poems throughout. The House is in the magnificent Gothic of the time, with its multiplied b.u.t.tresses, niches, images, pinnacles, and traceried windows. The Temple is a building which resembles nothing that ever existed. One face is Grecian architecture, a second Eastern, a third Egyptian, and a fourth Northern. Warton, in a note to the poem, says that Pope's "knowledge and taste in the fine arts were unquestionable." Had he possessed the crudest ideas of architecture he could not have affirmed that so hideous, and indeed so impossible a combination, surpa.s.sed in beauty whatever had been "beheld in proud Rome, or artful Greece, or elder Babylon." The details are worthy of the general conception. The northern side is said to be "of Gothic structure,"--not the glorious style which commonly bears the name, a style for which Pope had no eyes, since with Chaucer's description before him he ignores the mediaeval Gothic altogether, but a structure l.u.s.trous as gla.s.s, and "overwrought with ornaments of barbarous pride." "Huge colosses rise" upon its face, and around the statues are "engraved Runic characters." This part of the design appears to be an importation from the south. In the Egyptian temples colossal figures are often attached to the piers, and at the top, bottom, and sides of the piers there is a border of hieroglyphics.

With his statues Pope has conjoined "rude iron columns smeared with blood" upon which stand the "horrid forms of Scythian heroes," and in a note he gravely a.s.serts that this medley "is agreeable to the architecture of the northern part of the world." In the text he has ventured upon the no less extraordinary statement that all the facades were of "equal grace" or in other words that his barbarous and chimerical northern side was of equal grace with the architecture of Greece.

Johnson remarks that the learning and observation exhibited in the Temple of Fame were uncommon for a youth of twenty-two. The authority for Pope's age was an expression in his letter to Steele, Nov. 16, 1712, where he says of his work, "I was so diffident of it as to let it lie by me these two years just as you now see it;" and he adds in a note, "hence it appears this poem was writ before the author was twenty-two years old." With the discrepancy usual with him when the dates of his compositions were in question, he stated on the t.i.tle-page of the various reprints of the Temple of Fame, that it was "written in the year 1711," the first day of which found him nearer twenty-three than twenty-two. He did not publish it till 1715, and between his twenty-fifth year when he showed it to Steele, and his twenty-seventh year when it appeared, he subjected the poem to an extensive revision.

"I have read over your Temple of Fame twice," wrote Steele, Nov. 12, 1712, "and cannot find anything amiss of weight enough to call a fault, but see in it a thousand, thousand beauties." "Since you say," Pope replied, "you see nothing that may be called a fault, can you not think it so that I have confined the attendance of guardian spirits to heaven's favourites only?" He remedied the defect by getting rid of the guardian spirits; and with his own testimony to the changes which the plan underwent, the learning can only be considered as displaying the compa.s.s of his knowledge when he was upwards of twenty-six. It is surprising that Johnson should have thought that a very small amount of cla.s.sical mythology, and an acquaintance with the broad characteristics of a few celebrities of antiquity, was an unusual acquisition even for a man of twenty-two. Warton has pointed out that the narrow range of Pope's reading was more remarkable than its extent. He has not alluded to the Greek tragedians, and had probably never looked into a single play of aeschylus, Sophocles, or Euripides. The observation of life, which Johnson thought as precocious as the learning, is not of the recondite kind, and belongs exclusively to Chaucer. In whatever light we view the Temple of Fame it must be ranked at best with the secondary cla.s.s of Pope's productions, and the indifference with which it was regarded up to Johnson's time has continued unabated up to ours. The eight lines on the rocks of Zembla are fine, and there is an occasional good line in other portions of the piece, but the poem seldom rises above a cold, and somewhat languid elegance, and like the "pale suns"

which the author describes, it "rolls away unfelt."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: The remainder of this sentence was omitted by Pope in the later editions of his poem.]

[Footnote 2: Pope forgot that he had transferred portions of the second book to his own imitation.]

[Footnote 3: The parallel pa.s.sages from Chaucer were not given by Pope till 1736, and he then added the last sentence to the original advertis.e.m.e.nt.]