They are characteristic of that period of development
in which a youth of literary genius takes literary fame in the most
desperately serious sense. Pope is evidently putting his best foot
forward, and never for a moment forgets that he is a young author
writing to a recognized critic--except, indeed, when he takes the airs
of an experienced rake. We might speak of the absurd affectation
displayed in the letters, were it not that such affectation is the most
genuine nature in a clever boy. Unluckily it became so ingrained in Pope
as to survive his youthful follies. Pope complacently indulges in
elaborate paradoxes and epigrams of the conventional epistolary style;
he is painfully anxious to be alternately sparkling and playful; his
head must be full of literature; he indulges in an elaborate criticism
of Statius, and points out what a sudden fall that author makes at one
place from extravagant bombast; he communicates the latest efforts of
his muse, and tries, one regrets to say, to get more credit for
precocity and originality than fairly belongs to him; he accidentally
alludes to his dog that he may bring in a translation from the Odyssey,
quote Plutarch, and introduce an anecdote which he has heard from
Trumbull about Charles I.; he elaborately discusses Cromwell's classical
translations, adduces authorities, ventures to censure Mr. Rowe's
amplifications of Lucan, and, in this respect, thinks that Breboeuf,
the famous French translator, is equally a sinner, and writes a long
letter as to the proper use of the caesura and the hiatus in English
verse.
Pages:
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30