A French Life of Pope

·- : . 'o . A FRENCH LIFE OF POPE \V. L. MAcDoNALD· THOSE who are at all familiar with Pope biography must be impressed - . with the sad stat"e into which it had got and remained until Johnson'sLife of Pope put it upon a sound ·basis. Contemporary lives of this poet,_ and indeed all the biographies up to Ru:ffhead's in 1769, were for the most · part hack-work written to take advantage of some event which excited renewed .interest in Pope's career.I The most extensive of these, ((Squire" Ayre's Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Pope, in ·two volunies, was one of the sources to which the later biographers turned for information .or misinformation about the poet's life; and from it. they also learned the trick of eking out the meagre life with critical comments on: the poems. The other sources were of course what the poet had said about himself in the Correspondent~, the poe.ms, and the notes. . For- eighteen years after Pope's death readers had been awaiting the o life promised by Warburton in his edition of 1751, and the biographers were in ·the habit of referring to this promise of the "ColossuS-bully" of _ . literature when ·they undertook to furnish the public in the meantime with an account of the poet. But wh.en the "official" biography appeared it disappointed all the hopes which had been built upon Warburton's promise. The title-page of the Life of Pope which appeared in 1769 .bore the name of Owen Ruffhead, a lawyer, but everyone seemed to know that it'was written under Warburton's supervision. A reviewer in the Gentleman's Magazine of May, 1.769, complained that the Life contained nothing which was not·already known 'from Warburton's notes andJrom the poet's Correspondence, and that i't failed to collect from various publications details which should have been included.2 Littl~· attempt was made to keep the-chro~ology· straight; 0 the biographical details were of the most meagre and too frequent- , ly wer~ unreliable. Thus.Pope's removal from Binfie'td directly to Twickenhamis dated 1715.3 This double .error is a typical instance of Ruffhead,s (.or \Varburton's) incuriosity about the poet's life. Apart from the fact that he has dated the change of residence incorrectly, he apparent1y knew nothing about the poet's sojourn at Chiswick on the banks of the Thames between his removal from Binfidd and settling at Twickenham, tha~ is, between the years 1716 and 1718. Ru:ffhead is not OI?-IY inaccurate in his - -facts but sometimes misleads by what he omits to say, and he has swamped the biography in a deluge of critical remarks on the poems. ·This was the :fine flower of Pope biography up to .1769. All were agreed that the book was a sorry performance. With great profit to herself, English literature has gone to school to France for many lessons. It is to be regretted that recourse was not had to the neighbouring people for a lesson in the writing of biography-at least 1 See George Sherburn, The Ear(v Cm·cer of Alexander Pope, Introduction. 2/bid., 12. 3Ruffhead'sLife of Pope, 197. . 193 ,. ,·' I· . '' I I·.. ~ . •'' \ . ' I I , j.·.'194 . . .. .. • ••1 • THE UNIYERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY for alesson ih Pope biography~ At this point it is instructi~e and ~·efreshi~g . to turn to the French language for an admirable, critical life of Pope. In 1753 there was printed Oeuvres diverses de Pope, traduites del'anglois., and th~ translation w;as so popular tha.t in 1763 a new edition was i.ssued "aug-· ,mentee,de plusieurs pieces et la vie de l'auteur, a Amst~rdam eta Leipzic."·The biography, which is the point of interest he~e, occupies the first 215 pages of the first volume. This work is a model, in form at least, of what a critical piography should be. The author carefully announces the sources from which he has drawn material: Journal Br. itannique, September, 1751~ · edited. and presumably written by M. Maty; Memoires sur sa vie et ses ecrits, that -is, Ayre...