FullReads

‘We conquered France, but felt our captive’s charms–
Her arts victorious triumphed o’er our arms;
Britain to soft refinements less a foe,
Wit grew polite, and numbers learned to flow.’

Ten years then, before Joan of Arc’s execution, [Footnote 11] viz., about 1420 (if we are to believe Pope), or even fifteen years, France had a great domestic literature; and this unknown literature has actually furnished a basis to our own. Let us understand clearly what it is that Pope means to assert. For it is no easy matter to do that where a man dodges behind texts and notes, and shuffles between verse and prose, mystifying the reader, and designing to do so. Under the torture of cross-examination let us force Pope to explain what literature that is which, having glorified France, became the venerable mother of a fine English literature in an early stage of the fifteenth century? The reader, perhaps, fancies that possibly Pope may have expressed himself erroneously only from being a little hurried or a little confused. Not at all. I know my man better, perhaps, than the reader does; and I know that he is trying to hoax us. He is not confused himself, but is bent upon confusing us; and I am bent upon preventing him. And, therefore, again I ask sternly, What literature is this which very early in the fifteenth century, as early as Agincourt, we English found prospering in France, and which, for the benefit of the English intellect, such men as Ancient Pistol, Nym, Bardolph, Fluellen, Capt. Macmorris, Jamy, and other well-known literati in the army of Henry V., transplanted (or, ‘as the wise it call,’ conveyed) to England? Agincourt was fought in 1415; exactly four centuries before Waterloo. That was the beginning of our domination in France; and soon after the middle of that same fifteenth century, viz., about 1452, our domination was at an end. During that interval, therefore, it must have been, then, or not at all, that this great intellectual revolution worked by France upon England was begun and completed. Naturally, at this point, the most submissive and sycophantish of Pope’s friends would feel moved by the devil of curiosity, if not absolutely by the devil of suspicion, humbly to ask for a name or two, just as a specimen, from this great host of Anglo-Gallic wits. Pope felt (and groaned as he felt) that so reasonable a demand could not be evaded. ‘This comes of telling lies,’ must have been his bitter reflection: ‘one lie makes a necessity for another.’ However, he reflected that this second lie need not be introduced into the text, where it would have the fatal effect of blowing up the whole bubble: it might be hidden away in a foot-note. Not one person in twenty would read it, and he that did might easily suppose the note to be some unauthorized impertinence of a foolish commentator. Secretly therefore, silently, stealthily–so as to draw as little attention as possible–Pope introduced into a note his wicked little brazen solution of his own wicked and brazen conundrum. France, such was the proposition, had worked a miracle upon English ground; as if with some magician’s rod, she had called up spawn innumerable of authors, lyric, epic, dramatic, pastoral, each after his kind. But by whom had France moved in this creation as the chief demi-urgus? By whom, Mr. Pope? Name, name, Mr. Pope! ‘Ay,’ we must suppose the unhappy man to reply, ‘that’s the very question which I was going to answer, if you wouldn’t be so violent.’ ‘Well, answer it then. Take your own time, but answer; for we don’t mean to be put off without some kind of answer.’ ‘Listen, then,’ said Pope, ‘and I’ll whisper it into your ear; for it’s a sort of secret.’ Now think, reader, of a secret upon a matter like this, which (if true at all) must be known to the antipodes. However, let us have the secret. ‘The secret,’ replied Pope, ‘is, that some time in the reign of Charles the Second–when I won’t be positive, but I’m sure it was after the Restoration–three gentlemen wrote an eighteen-penny pamphlet.’ ‘Good! And what were the gentlemen’s names?’ ‘One was Edmund Waller, the poet; one was Mr. Go-dolphin; and the other was Lord Dorset.’ ‘This trinity of wits, then, you say, Mr. Pope, produced a mountain, price eighteen-pence, and this mountain produced a mouse.’ ‘Oh, no! it was just the other way. They produced a mouse, price eighteen-pence, and this mouse produced a mountain, viz., the total English literature.’ O day and night, but this is wondrous strange! The total English literature–not the tottle only, but the tottle of the whole, like an oak and the masts of some great amiral, that once slept in an acorn–absolutely lying hid in an eighteen-penny pamphlet! And what, now, might this pamphlet be about? Was it about the curing of bacon, or the sublimer art of sowing moonshine broadcast? It was, says Pope, if you must know everything, a translation from the French. And judiciously chosen; for it was the worst (and surely everybody must think it proper to keep back the best, until the English had earned a right to such luxuries by showing a proper sense of their value)–the worst it was, and by very much the worst, of all Corneille’s dramas; and its name was ‘Pompey.’ Pompey, was it? And so, then, from Pompey’s loins we, the whole armies of English litterateurs, grubs and eagles, are lineally descended. So says Pope. So he must say, In obedience to his own line of argument. And, this being the case, one would be glad to have a look at Pompey. It is hard upon us literati, that are the children of Pompey, not to have a look at the author of our existence. But our chance of such a look is small indeed. For Pompey, you are to understand, reader, never advanced so far as to a second edition. That was a poor return on the part of England for Pompey’s services. And my too sceptical mind at one time inclined to doubt even Pompey’s first edition; which was wrong, and could have occurred only to a lover of paradoxes. For Warton (not Tom, but Joe) had actually seen Pompey, and records his opinion of him, which happened to be this: that Pompey was ‘pitiful enough.’ These are Joe’s own words. Still, I do not see that one witness establishes a fact of this magnitude. A shade of doubt, therefore, continues to linger over Pompey’s very existence; and the upshot is, that Pompey (not the great, but confessedly) the doubtful, eighteen-penny Pompey, but, in any case, Pompey, ‘the Pitiful,’ is the Great overriding and tutelary power, under whose inspiration and inaugurating impulse our English literature has blossomed and ripened, root, stem, and branch, through the life-struggles of five centuries, into its present colossal proportions.