Letters to ARBUTHNOT
Letters to ARBUTHNOT
Unit-25 Pope: A Background to An Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot http://egyankosh.ac.in/bitstream/123456789/22187/1/Unit-25.pdf
Unit-26 Pope: The Study of An Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot http://egyankosh.ac.in/bitstream/123456789/22189/1/Unit-26.pdf
Read the Poem here - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44895/epistle-to-dr-arbuthnot
Difficult words and explanation-
Bedlam - a scene of uproar and confusion. 2. an institution for the care of mentally ill people.
Parnassus - 1. poetry or poets collectively. 2. any center of poetic or artistic activity.
thicket - a dense group of bushes or trees.
grit - small loose particles of stone or sand.
maudlin - self-pityingly or tearfully sentimental.
nostrum - a medicine prepared by an unqualified person, especially one that is not considered effective.
coxcomb - a vain and conceited man; a dandy. 2. a man unduly concerned with looking stylish and fashionable.
Codrus - Semi mythical king of Ahens
Fib - a lie, typically an unimportant one.
Why did I write? What sin to me unknown Dipt me in ink, my parents', or my own?
In one sense, the act of writing is a washing away of the original sin, in another the dipping in black ink suggests some form of divine punishment. Writing, especially of the satire, involves a lot of mud-slinging, character-assassination and slander. Has he been burdened with this ineffectual or harmful work because of some unknown past sins, his own or his parents'?
leer - look or gaze in a lascivious or unpleasant way.
sneer -a contemptuous or mocking smile, remark, or tone.
timorous - showing or suffering from nervousness or a lack of confidence.
plaister’d - a mixture of lime, sand, and water, sometimes stiffened with hair or other fibres, that is applied to the surface of a wall or ceiling as a soft paste that hardens when dry.
pindar - Greek Poet
Exigencies - Urgent need or demand
dunce by dunce - a person who is slow at learning; a stupid person.
Lampoon - publicly criticize (someone or something) by using ridicule, irony, or sarcasm.
soe’er - Whatsoever, wherever
Libel - a published false statement that is damaging to a person's reputation; a written defamation.
Fop - a man who is concerned with his clothes and appearance in an affected and excessive way.
dimpling - to produce dimple
Smut - a small flake of soot or other dirt or a mark left by one.
Antithesis - a person or thing that is the direct opposite of someone or something else.
Vile - extremely unpleasant.
Cherub - a winged angelic being described in biblical tradition as attending on God, represented in ancient Middle Eastern art as a lion or bull with eagles' wings and a human face and regarded in traditional Christian angelology as an angel of the second highest order of the nine-fold celestial hierarchy.
innoxious - with no adverse effect
languor - tiredness or inactivity, especially when pleasurable.
THE THEME
The poem is a condensed autobiography on the whole course arid pattern of Pope's life and on his motives and reasons for being a poet and a satirist. It is an attempt at self-justification, self-education and self-definition. The poet is defending his personal integrity.
he was motivated in doing so not by malevolence but the simple desire to live in peace and honour with family and friends. It includes self-defence also against the libels and slanders of some of the literary third-raters. These hacks who pursue him everywhere have scant regard either for his privacy or for their own honour or respect. They have even gone against their own true natures since most of them, in insisting on becoming poets, have violated their true callings
pope's views on good, lasting poetry are also indirectly revealed. He is full of disdain for the professional/hack writers who write only or mostly the panegyric and whose pen is controlled from outside. They thus become the dummies and their patrons the prompters, the ventriloquists (line 3 I 8). Pope's logic was that one should write poetry to share values or communicate something worthwhile, not just to earn because then it cannot be good art. The poem also describes, to an extent, the process of Pope's personal development, his growth as a satirist. His earlier works defined jolly the nature of a thing, now he deals with becoming, with the process, and not just the static stage of being.
As a true Christian, he pays his debts, believes in a God and says his prayers (line 268). The end provides yet another proof of Pope's filial piety in the affectionate solicitude with which he hopes to tend the declining years of his aged mother.
He defends his satire on the ground that he selected his friends on pure merit, was not misled by wealth, power, fashion or mercenary motives, did not give in to flattery, did not lie and stooped only to truth and moralized his song
The Epistle thus attempts an account of Pope's growth as a satiric poet and a good human being. The poem can be regarded as literary autobiography, as a personal testament and exercise in self-defence, as a survey of the contemporary literary milieu and as a testimony to Pope's poetic skill where personal grudges merge into a general and profound concern for society and its values.
Byron and Ruskin called him "the moral poet of all civilization" for dealing with the moral problems of an artificial and complex society.
THE STRUCTURE
Instead of sketching the Landscape or creating an atmosphere of affection and friendly intimacy, Pope draws the reader straight into the middle of a real-life situation with the help of a dramatic dialogue
Out of breath, he asks his servant-gardener John Searle to shut the front door, 'lye up the knocker' (line 2) and not let anyone in, and finds his old friend and physician waiting for him. A perfect situation for the frank and direct outbursts of an irritated and overwrought poet.
Detailing the standard and motives of these professional hacks who flatter, bribe and can stoop to any extreme to publish and thereby earn money, name or fame, Pope relates the slander he has patiently borne, the attacks made on his integrity and morals and the vitriolic that did not stop at his writings or ideology but freely extended to his sickly, deformed body, his exiled friend and his dead father. Attributing all his virtues to his parents, the Epistle closes with a double farewell, an affectionate epitaph for his father (lines 392-405) and a traditional salute to his lifelong friend and guide, the poem's dedicatee.
The poem closes as it began, with return to the home, but instead of the desperate flight now there is the calm assurance that here alone the true values and self exist.
Unit-26 Pope: The Study of An Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot
http://egyankosh.ac.in/bitstream/123456789/22189/1/Unit-26.pdf
The two major animal images used by Pope throughout the poem are of a dog and an ass, the ass taken literally as a symbol of stupidity and not as a vulgarized metaphor which it has become of late. Dog-star Sirius reappears in late summer heat which is traditionally a time of satiric Poets rage. It is dangerous in the ascendant to sanity, one thinks of mad dogs and mad men.
Pope sees himself as the truth teller.
Brought up on ass's milk, Lord Hervey is too insensitive and foolish to even realise that he is being ridiculed. The reference however, is both ironic and incongruous because ass's milk was commonly described as a tonic in all weakly constitutions as being more easily digestible than even cow's milk aild Pope himself was advised a valetudinary diet.
Sporus is supposed to have a cherub's face and a reptile's body (line 33 1). According to the Jewish tradition the Eve's tempter was not an ordinary serpent but a creature with human head, sometimes of a man, sometimes of a woman, and a reptile all the rest. Of course, here Lord Hervey's Satanic machinations are being hinted.
The toad at the ear of Eve (line 3 19) suggests Hervey's easy access to Caroline. The reference is to Paradise Lost Is where Satan is found, squatting like a toad, close to the ear of Eve. The animal imagery is used to insinuate secret machinations. Pope wouldn't toady to even the royalty. He stoops only to truth as a falcon to its prey
Earlier the scribbler who writes hastily and carelessly and is an inferior writer is portrayed as a filthy house-spider. Unaware of his thin designs, flimsy lines, dirty work and rickety edifice, he goes on spinning the structure anew out of his excrement even if his fibs are openly exposed.
In The Dunciad and Satires also Pope presents pedants and bad writers as clumsy animals, insects, reptiles and river-birds, frogs, lizards, flies.
Interestingly, in the Verses addressed to the Imitation of Horace (1733) Pope is described as both a wasp and reptile. In Codrus (1728), printed in pamphlet Attacks he is portrayed as a splenetic toad, venomous but harmless. In Dennis' True Character (1 71 6) Pope was presented as a Satan with an angel's face.
CHRISTIAN IMAGERY
Pope stresses that he is a true Christian to prove that he is a far superior poet and human being than those he has been satirizing in the poem. He pays his debts, believes in a God and says his prayers
By pursuing writing as his career he didn't disregard any duty or disobey his father like many others. And Pope is the Christian son of Christian parents-an obedient, loving and devoted son of an ailing mother.
Court Poems and other scandalous pieces were mischievously printed in his name by Curll and others obviously to encash his name and reputation because Curll published every scrap he could rake out against Pope and his friends.
Why did I write? What sin to me unknown Dipt me in ink, my parents', or my own?
In one sense, the act of writing is a washing away of the original sin, in another the dipping in black ink suggests some form of divine punishment. Writing, especially of the satire, involves a lot of mud-slinging, character-assassination and slander. Has he been burdened with this ineffectual or harmful work because of some unknown past sins, his own or his parents'?
THE ECONOMIC LEITMOTIF
Then from the Mint walks forth the man of rhyme, Happy! to catch me, just at dinner-time
The Mint was a sanctuary for insolvent indebtors in Southwark; the man of rhyme is happy because Pope can be trusted to give him dinner. Such lines reveal very clearly the gap between the poet and those who seek his help. '
All these poets are insolvent. The best they can aspire for is Pope's 'friendship, and a prologue, and ten pound' (line 48). Some of them have given up their profession in favour of poetry-the clerk (line 17) and James Moore Smythe (line 23) ought to be earning an honest living following their natural calling. The drunken parson, Laurence Eusden and maudlin (alcohol-induced sentimentality) poetess are neglecting their duty.
Pope feels superior on 3 counts:
1) he does not need to sell his Muse
2) he is undoubtedly a good poet, and
3) lie has the courage (good fortune?) to stand by his convictions and do only what
He considers it right. He doesn't need to compromise his honour. He doesn't have
to earn or steal a meal. 'Born to write, converse, and live with ease' (line 196) he
can relax in sweet retreat on the bank of Thames or choose to travel by land or by
water, in a chariot or a barge
The hacks live by their wits-they need to write poetry to pay the rent, to eat. They live in Mint (line 13), in Drury-lane (line 41) and in Grubstreet (line 11 1) -wellknown resorts of prostitutes and writers in garrets. Writing is thus connected with - hunger, with low-life, with stealing and theft.
The filth, stench and violence associated with actual
slum regions in London became an objective correlative for bad writing. Bad art is
considered as immoral as bad conduct. The prostitute author is an object of
contempt, not pity.
Patronage was the dominant economic apparatus for the sponsorship of the arts. The royal patronage had started in Charles II's time.
We now have a three-tier structure of
1) what the government wants,
2) what the patron wants, and
3) what the reading public wants.
The professional writer has to cater to at least one of them to survive. This obviously leads to corruption and commercialism in art. Their relationship is based on selfishness and dishonesty. The wealthy and the titled would support a project entirely or be fed with soft dedication (line 233). Writers would be given government jobs carrying real duties or mere sinecures guaranteeing a living. Writers could also become journalists on the pay of the government. Of course, they would then toe the official line.
Booksellers agreed to publish books only by subscription, i.e., advance orders, and only the rich could be expected or persuaded to risk their money. The least they would expect in return was humility and public acknowledgement of their patronage of the arts.
Timon's villa with its massive tasteless structures only betrays the vulgar excrescence and bad taste of its owner. The impressive study inside is filled with rare editions the contents of which the owner knows or cares nothing about shows only the pride of the owner. Bufo's library is another example. The faculty of judging right is sadly lacking. Wealth is being lavished on vulgar displays and true sympathy is being bypassed in the interest of snobbery.
. The pretending patron doesn't speak his mind, doesn't give them sound advice, doesn't properly guide them. Together they are poisoning the world of letters at source.
POPE AS A SATIRIST
The distinction that Arbuthnot presses on Pope is the distinction that exists between Horatian and Juvenalian Satire. Although both Horace and Juvenal use the same form, Satura, the basic difference between them is that while Horace attempts to persuade with witty and urbane ridicule, Juvenal attempts to chastise with fierce and savage denunciation. Horace tries to laugh us into truth, Juvenal provokes our indignation and horror. Though Pope had chosen to imitate Horace's poems in the 1730s, it was Juvenal's savage mode that actually influenced his work.
Usually Pope subdivides mankind into groups-fools, knaves, good men, the rich, the poor, ancients, moderns, friends, enemies, etc. His individual obviously belongs to these groups.While speaking seemingly of an individual with all his individual traits, he presents him as a representative of a class, with typically generic attributes-attributes which in his situation he is most likely to possess.
May some choice Patron bless each gray goose quill May every Bavius have his Bufo still !
Bavius, since Virgil, has been a traditional name for a wretched poet. Bufo, also a proper name, is made to represent another class. The former refers to every bad poet, the latter to every rich fool who gives his patronage to all such.
Some of the satiric devices dope employs here are as follows :
a dramatic device, his interventions provide dynamism and open-mindedness. Pope anticipates a protest within the mind of the reader and states it as Arbythnot's. Another viewpoint is given and reader's participation identification is invited insured
External and internal dialogue is used to gain confidence and sympathetic agreement of his reader. The opposite point of view is given a hearing, it is not ignored.
'Shut, shut the door, good John' - introduces dramatic immediacy which in turn establishes the urgency and authenticity of what the poet has to say. This dramatic quality marks the entire poem. There are marked variations though in mood from affectionate reminiscences to the most virulent attacks.
Satire compels attention by overstatement. The object of satire should appear too contemptible, too trivial and too revolting to deserve our sympathy. Hence the biting I attack on Bufo and Sporus.
The two predominant satiric metaphors are of bestiality and madness-of both counsel-seekers and counsel-givers.
bestial metaphors which take the shape of dogs and asses.
Pope creates antiselves through his major portraits. Atticus is a talented writer like Pope himself. his genius, his talent, his fame and his art but he is desperate for praise and envious of rivals. Thinks too much of what the world thinks of him. Pope doesn't.
Bufo feeds on others while caring nothing for them. Pope will not lie, and will not encourage the fool.
Sporus has a weak constitution like Pope. But he is a corrupt satirist-turned scandalmonger. Pope will never be like him-scheming and plotting all the time.
These three serve as developing antithesis to Pope. Using the device of antithesis Pope establishes himself as a perfect poet and a perfect human being.
SATIRIC PORTRAITS
Philips, Tate and Attlcus
Initially Pope was drawn into the circle of Buttonians, that is, the group of writers headed by Addison, meeting regularly at Button's Coffee-house, the rising centre of literary interest. The group was also known as 'the little senate'. Pope was entrusted with the responsibility of writing the prologue to Addison's great tragedy Cata, With its ringing declarations about liberty the play could be taken for a manifesto which would be risky since the Tories were in power. The prologue was, therefore, to be written by Pope and to even things up and save recriminations, the epilogue was given to Garth, a known Whig, In the beginning Pope was all enthusiasm and respect for Addison. Addison was dismayed by Pope's defence of his play and though Steele conveyed his disapproval of the pamphlet to its publisher, Lintot. Lintot passed the letter to Dennis, who printed it in 1729. This unfortunate incident of Pope's affection being rebuffed by Addison presaged the course of their relationship.
Ambrose Philips (1671-1749) was a writer of popular verse. The praise awarded to Philips by Addison, Tickell and others was taken by Pope as direct depreciation of himself.
Pope's sneers at the translators as inferior species are surprising considering that he had been able to secure his own fortune and position only by a translation of the Iliad
The first volume of Pope's Homer appeared in 17 15 and in the sarne year Addison's friend Tickell published his version of the first book of Iliad.Pope could not possibly present Addison as a fool and so he painted the picture of the evil of the literary temperament.
BUFO
Bubb Dodington, Bubo of the Epistle, was known for his political improbability, tactless extravagance and affectation of patronage (line 280). Dodington and Montagu together are satirised as Bubo (Latin for owl) and Bufo (Latin for toad) here. Bufo is a hard task master whose proteges must earn their bread with devotion and humiliation and even then it is only very rarely that he offers them an adequate reward.
Bufo is a vain, empty-headed patron who has hardly any self left, just like Atticus; his bust of Pindar is headless and it's, in fact, his library that attracts these poetic dependants
Bufo thus represents the vain aristocracy who are vitiating the literary atmosphere by . encouraging the non-deserving and neglecting the Qly meritorious. Bufo symbolises the decline of the aristocrats' morals and literary taste.
Sporus
Sporus is the name of Nero's boy kept for homosexual gratification. Here Pope gives this name to John, Lord Hervey. The name of one of Nero's minions is designed as an insult. Pope sneers at him under the name of 'gentle Fanny'
Arbuthnot objects in a very different manner. Sporus doesn't deserve
to be talked about, written about. He won't even understand he is being mocked. ,
That's the level of his insensitivity, his intelligence. Why should Pope waste his
satiric skills on him? 'Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?
Pope has however become much too personal. A well-bred spaniel, Sporus dares not bite. His spite, smut, whispers and mumblings are clearly opposed to Pope's outspokenness.
His sexual ambiguity and suspected sexual impotence are stressed very emphatically (lines 324-329). His homosexual preference may be based on his well-known love for Stephen Fox but the charge of impotence is hard to sustain because Hervey married the beautiful Molly Lepel, sired a large family and even had a couple of affairs. Even the dig at Hervey's valetudinary diet seems ironic considering that Pope himself was of very poor health and had to live lifelong on a special diet. He is said to have tried that remedy himself
Pope was equally conscious of his physical appearance and was quite proud that his deformity had not affected his facial features. He took care that all portraits showed his face prominently displayed with his deformed body completely left outside the frame.
Pope makes ample use of alliteration and onomatopoeia to bring out Hervey's true character-stinks and stings, ear of Eve, puns or politics, spite or smut, etc.
The Neglected Genius
Lord Halifax, therefore, does nothing to help Dryden in his lifetime but generously offers to meet the expenses of his funeral. The proud Gay also died neglected (line 258). It is however, on record that Gay's The Beggar's Opera was received very well and made him quite rich. Gay is also said to have benefitted from the system of patronage. The Duke of Queensberry and his Duchess stood by him till the very end (line 260). What Pope really attempted to do was to highlight the opposition between the independent and, therefore, neglected poet-genius and the prostituted poet-scribbler. Men of real genius refuse to be anyone's minions, let alone the politician's. Confidence in their own capabilities gives them the courage to assert.
Self-portrait
The poem opens with Tope's prosperity. He has got a servant waiting on him (line 1). His palatial house is surrounded by luxuriant shades and thickets. He has his own underground passage (lines 7-8). He has got a chariot and also a barge to be rowed to London (line 10). The contrast between his easy affluence and thl: indigent Mint Crowd feeling happy to catch him just at dinner-time' is obvious (line 14). What shows a lack of good feelings however, is Pope's constant harping upon the beggary and miseries of the poor authors, especially when we recall that he owed his own well-being to the Homer subscription.
He is different from them in the following ways:
1) He was a born poet. Poetry was to him a natural accomplishment against the professional who 'strains from hard-bound brains, eight lines a year' (line 1 82).
2) Poetry has never been for him a means of earning a living. It was a pastime, a painkiller, like Arbuthnot's medicines, to help him 'through' this long disease, my life' (line 132). Unlike William Windham he doesn't have to write anything to please his mistress (line 376). His 'Muse but serv'd to ease some friend, not Wife' (line 13 1).
3) Publication of his poems? No one advised him to keep his 'piece nine years' (line 40). On the contrary, all the renowned men of letters received him 'with open arms' and 'approved' of his works (lines 142-143). He didn't need to engage in flattery, bribery or surrender (lines 45-46) to get published. He was encouraged not by courtier-patrons but by independent and gifted men.
4) He is determined not to be 'silent' and not to 'lye' (line 34), and to tell the truth and reveal the secret (lines 80-81), whatever be the consequences. There are several other instances of self-praise. Lintot usually adorned his shop with titles of books in red letters. Books were advertised by clapping copies of title pages to boards or posts in front of the book-shops. Lintot displayed Pope's books obviously because there was a big demand for them (lines 2 15-2 16).
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