NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE IN ALEXANDER POPE'S EPISTLES TO
SEVERAL PERSONS AND JAMES THOMSON'S THE SEASONS
by
Roseanne Silvia Carrara
A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements
for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Graduate Department of English
University of Toronto
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Nature and Human Nature in Alexander Pope's Epistles to Several Persons and
James Thomson's The Seasons
Doctor of Philosophy, 2008
Graduate Department of English
University of Toronto
ABSTRACT
This thesis identifies an affinity between two eighteenth-century poets whose works are rarely compared. Alexander Pope is chiefly considered a poet of human nature and James Thomson, a poet of natural description. I propose that Pope, in the Epistles to
Several Persons, and Thomson, in The Seasons, compare phenomena of external nature to human behaviour to teach the proper employment of the imagination.
Relying upon their own insights into nature and referring to natural philosophy, both suggest that the hidden order in nature compares to a hidden order in the self. They teach the imagination of virtue within and the necessity of acting consciously upon this quality. Such action also requires both the imagination of and the benevolent response to others' sentiments.
In the Introduction, I present a rationale for reading these poems as sequences.
And I consider the relationship between poetry and philosophy in the eighteenth-century in regard to the imagination.
I then trace Pope's employment of natural imagery across the four Epistles to
Several Persons. Chapter One considers the "Epistle to Cobham," where Pope teaches the importance of identifying the "Ruling Passion" by referring to external nature. Chapter
ii Two examines how Pope reprises these references in the "Epistle to a Lady" to encourage sympathy and generosity. Chapter Three surveys the "Epistle to Bathurst" and the
"Epistle to Burlington." Pope presents "Good Sense" as a means of tempering both "Self- love" and "Good-nature."
Next, I read portions of The Seasons sequentially to identify Thomson's similar emphasis upon employing the imagination to identify one's virtues and to cultivate sympathy for others. Chapter Four presents a close reading of "Summer," lines 1104-
1370, considering Thomson's references to violent weather in relation to his lesson of cultivating virtuous love. Chapter Five examines Thomson's treatment of the imagination of the dying swain in "Winter" and his subsequent references to this scene as a means of teaching charity and "active Government."
In the Conclusion, I consider Pope and Thomson's employment of the terms
"vision" and "visionary," respectively, to confirm their espousal of the employment of the imagination in the pursuit of a virtuous life.
in ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Department of English at the
University of Toronto for the Open Fellowships and the V. W. Pratt Memorial
Scholarships I received during my studies. I also thank the Social Sciences and
Humanities Research Council for three years of financial support.
I am especially grateful to my supervisor, Professor Richard Greene, who shared his wisdom and sustained his enthusiasm over the course of the project. His evocative questions always led to better answers. My committee members, Professors John Baird and Carol Percy were more than generous with their suggestions and support. I also thank
Professors Thomas Keymer and Lawrence Lipking for their careful examination of this thesis.
I am thankful for the support of my family. Theresa and Albert Moritz not only answered essential questions, they also provided hours of care for their grandchildren.
Those children, Beatrice and Tobias Moritz, who arrived at different times during the project, now support me with their interest and patience. All of my parents encouraged me, each in their way. And my grandparents, who passed away during the completion of this thesis, made and still make virtuous love more than a possibility.
I am also thankful for the kindness of many friends. Julianne Stephens Dieterich has been an inspiration since we met as undergraduates at Northwestern University. Carl
Smith has been supportive since the day I interviewed for the American Culture program at NU. Robin Norris, Daniela Janes, and Wai-Ying Lee proved a visionary company.
This thesis is dedicated to my husband Blaise Moritz, for "rendering Bliss
secure."
iv Nature and Human Nature in Alexander Pope's Epistles to Several Persons and
James Thomson's The Seasons
CONTENTS
Title Page i
Abstract ii
Acknowledgements iv
Contents v
Abbreviations of Primary Sources vi
Introduction 1
I. Nature and Imagination: The Ruling Passion in the "Epistle to Cobham" 28
II The Nature of the "Epistle to a Lady": Pope's Lessons in Fellow Feeling 70
III. Good Sense as Radical Imagination: Pope's Epistles to Burlington and Bathurst 115
IV. "That Spark the Tempest Wak'd": The Impulses of "Summer," 1104-1379 165 1104-1168 The "Touch Etherial" in Nature and in Man 169 1169-1222 Meeting "Instant Fate" with Love and Confidence 182 1223-1268 The Exercise of Fancy 200 1269-1370 "If Aught Profane to Love" 211
V. "Winter": The Imagination of Thomson's Swain 232
Conclusion 267
Works Consulted 272
v ABBREVIATIONS OF PRIMARY SOURCES
CP The Correspondence of Alexander Pope, Ed. George Sherburn, 5 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956.
DEL Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language, First and Fourth Editions (1755 and 1773), Ed. Anne McDermott, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 1996.
ESP Epistles to Several Persons (Moral Essays), Ed. F. W. Bateson, Volume Ill-ii, The Twickenham Edition of The Poems of Alexander Pope, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1951.
- "Cobham" "Epistle to Cobham"
- "Lady" "Epistle to a Lady"
- "Bathurst" "Epistle to Bathurst"
- "Burlington' "Epistle to Burlington"
LD Alan Dugald McKillop, James Thomson: Letters and Documents, Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1958.
SEA James Thomson, The Seasons, Ed. James Sambrook. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981.
When appropriate, secondary sources cited in footnotes contain only half-titles. For example, Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake appears Fearful Symmetry. See "Works Consulted" for full titles.
vi 2 in a manner which little credits their interest in the imagination.2 Thomson's The
Seasons, which has often been considered a "miscellany," is most often presented to contemporary audiences in the form of a single season or in shorter selections. Pope's
Epistles to Several Persons are rarely read, now, in the group of four in which Pope presented them throughout his career. Despite their consistent appearance as a collection in successive editions of Pope's Works (1735ff.), and despite Pope's presentation of the four poems as the Epistles to Several Persons (T744)5 towards the end of his life, scholars often single out the "Epistle to Cobham," the "Epistle to a Lady," the "Epistle to
Bathurst," or the "Epistle to Burlington" for use in the classroom and for critical inquiry.
The Epistles to Several Persons and The Seasons are available to us in reliable, scholarly editions, those editions upon which this thesis depends. However, viewing the works as sequences remains the exception rather than the rule.
Recent critical interest in the miscellany and in the anthological reading habits of eighteenth-century audiences supports this practice of selection.6 Stefanie Lethbridge contends that the eighteenth-century "long poem was read much like an anthology and
2 Northrop Frye, Fearful Symmetry (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1947) 3. 3 Mary Jane Scott, James Thomson, Anglo-Scot (Athens: University of Georgia, 1988) 146-81; Stefanie Lethbridge, "Anthological Reading Habits in Eighteenth Century: The Case of Thomson's Seasons" Anthologies of British Poetry. Eds. Barbara Korte, Ralf Schneider, and Stefanie Lethbridge (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000) 90. 4 "Ethic Epistles, Second Book," Works, Vol. II (London: Lintot, 1735ff.). The "First Book" incorporated An Essay on Man. In the Works. Vol. II (1735ff.), the "Ethic Epistles, Second Book" included other poems (with the four ESP always at the forefront) or preceded a "Third Book" of "Ethic Epistles, to Several Persons" of ranging number (incl. epistles to Addison, Arbuthnot, Blount, Craggs, Jervas, and Oxford). See ESP xi-xlvi et passim; Miriam Leranbaum, Alexander Pope's 'Opus Magnum' 1729-1744 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1977). 5 Epistles to Several Persons (London, 1744q., suppressed, the basis for ESP), Eighteenth Century Collections Online [Henceforth referred to as ECCOl, Gale Group, Document Number: CW117119553.
Lethbridge, the long poem would be read in "fragments."8 The reader tended to "'dip' rather than read in long sessions," and these fragments were not always read "in sequence."9 Lethbridge argues that her thesis about "fragmentary" and "piecemeal" reading of the long poem, presented in regards to The Seasons, will
work as well for other eighteenth-century long poems such as William Cowper's
The Task, Edward Young's Night Thoughts, Alexander Pope's Moral Essays or
Oliver Goldsmith's Deserted Village.10
Lethbridge's consideration of the Moral Essays, or, the four Epistles to Several Persons as a "long poem" supports my case for reading the epistles in sequence.
Still, one must object to surmises about the habits of the eighteenth-century reader. Fragmentary reading of Thomson or Pope does not necessarily differ from fragmentary reading of other poems in this or any other period. One is not likely to sit reading Paradise Lost or The Faerie Queene from front to end in a single sitting, either, but there is no doubt that these pieces have a very particular narrative form. As well, sequence is not necessarily broken if one reads in fragments. A reader who reads piecemeal might not forget the placement of the fragment within the book. And
Lethbridge's notion that "eighteenth-century readers preferred to read poetry either more slowly or repeatedly, since they tended to buy rather than borrow poetry"11 suggests that
"lingering," fragmentary or otherwise, took place. Additionally, the copyright battles over
The Seasons were fought over the publication of cheap editions of the whole rather than
7 Lethbridge 89-90. 8 Lethbridge 95. 9 Lethbridge 96. 10 Lethbridge 89n5. 11 Lethbridge 99. 4 parts. While publishers were able to circumvent such legislation by reprinting selections, readers might yet have made associations between discrete selections or between selections and the whole.13
Those who read the poems of Pope and Thomson as sequences and who confirm the importance of this type of reading also, at times, identify distinction and fragmentation. Treating Pope's consideration of nature in the Epistles to Several
Persons, Thomas Edwards considers the second poem in the sequence, the "Epistle to a
Lady," only at the close of his study and with little reference to nature.14 Miriam
Leranbaum considers the four epistles a significant part of Pope's projected opus magnum project, his attempt to write "the Philosophical Opus Magnum that was to have treated almost every conceivable aspect of human life from man's relation to the universe, to learning and wit."15 She defends a reading of the four epistles as a book, the second in Pope's collection of "Ethic Epistles," whose first book consisted of An Essay on Man. Because of Pope's consideration of the manner in which these poems were to respond to that Essay, however, Leranbaum reads the poems in pairs,16 arguing that the epistles to Cobham and Lady share but a "family resemblance" to the epistles to Bathurst and Burlington.17 When Ralph Cohen presents his book-length reading of The Seasons as an "unfolding," he concludes that the poem proves a "palimpsest," a means of viewing
12 The reproduction of The Seasons formed the basis for the most important litigation over copyright in the eighteenth-century. See Ronan Deazley, On the Origin of the Right to Copy (Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2004); Trevor Ross, "Copyright and the Invention of Tradition," Eighteenth-Century Studies 26.1 (Autumn, 1992) 1-27. 13 See R. M. Wiles, Freshest Advices: Early Provincial Newspapers in England (Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1965). 14 Thomas Edwards, This Dark Estate (Berkeley: University of California, 1963) 73. 15 Reuben Brower, Alexander Pope: The Poetry of Allusion (Oxford: Clarendon, 1956) 241 (qtd. in Leranbaum 1). 16 Leranbaum 27-8. 17 Leranbaum 180. 5 the world "in fragments" so that "even organically unified parts are merely another aspect of fragmentation, held together by the principles of repetition and transformation."18
Bibliographical studies also emphasize the instability of the poems. Recalling that
"Pope exercised an unprecedented level of control over the presentation of his work,"
Julian Ferraro warns that we risk "ignoring, or underestimating the radical transformations that can take place as the work of art is constructed and reconstructed, presented and re-presented" especially in such texts as the epistles.1 By considering the range of poems that served as part of the collection of "Ethic Epistles," Ferraro suggests that Pope's relationships to the figures in the poems are not "uncritical" and that as the group changes, it "encapsulates a series of engagements of wildly differing resonance."20
Still, Ferraro's reading of the "Epistle to Burlington," in this light, proves a significant consideration of Pope's shifting representation of the poem's addressee over the course of his career.21 Such "difference" also applies to Thomson, whose revisions of The Seasons were extensive. As Cohen observes, The Seasons of the mid-1740's is "more impressive if one attends to its modest inception" in the 1726 poem, "Winter."22 Shaun Mam, sensitive to this transformation, reads "Winter" (1726) as an exercise in "magisterial negation" which the poet's successive revisions of The Seasons tend towards but often veil.23
Ralph Cohen, The Unfolding of the Seasons (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1970) 327. Emphasized by Rebecca Parkin in her review of Cohen's book, Eighteenth-Century Studies 6.1 (Autumn 1972) 135. 19 Julian Ferraro, "From Text to Work: The Presentation and Re-presentation of 'Epistles to Several Persons,'" Proceedings of the British Academy. Ed. Howard Erskine-Hill, Vol. 91 (New York: Oxford UP, 1988)117. 20 Ferraro 117-18. 21 Julian Ferraro, "Taste and Use: Pope's 'Epistle to Burlington,'" British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 19.2 (Autumn, 1996) 111-34. 22 Cohen 325. 23 Shaun Irlam, Elations (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1999)130-35. Indeed, as with Edwards, Leranbaum and Cohen, Ferraro and Mam confirm the interest of both Pope and Thomson in maintaining these sequences throughout their careers. Both poets likened their works and the art of reading them to "Nature."
Thomson anticipates the treatment of the forthcoming seasons as a "succession" in his
1726 "Preface" to "Winter":
I only wish my Description of the various Appearance of Nature in Winter, and,
as I purpose, in the other Seasons, may have the good Fortune, to give the Reader
some of that true Pleasure, which They, in their agreeable Succession, are,
always, sure to inspire into my Heart.24
Here, if in part an advertisement for his collected Seasons, Thomson hopes that the
"succession" of seasons will appear as "agreeable" as the "various Appearance of Nature in Winter" itself. Earlier in the "Preface," Thomson scoffs at what might be considered fragmentary, occasional and anecdotal poems, complaining of the
forced, unaffecting, Fancies; little, glittering Prettinesses; mixed Turns of Wit,
and Expression; which are as widely different from Native POETRY as Buffoonery
is from the Perfection of human Thinking.25
There is something in the piecemeal that Thomson despises, and he opposes nature and
the native to anecdotal "Buffoonery." He finds
no Subject more elevating, more amusing; more ready to awake the poetical
Enthusiasm, the philosophical Reflection, and the moral Sentiment, than the
Works of Nature. Where can we meet with such Variety, such Beauty, such
24 "Preface," SEA p. 307,11. 148-51. 25 SEA p. 305.11. 62-65. 7
Magnificence? All that enlarges, and transports, the Soul? What more inspiring
than a calm, wide, Survey of Them?
Thomson views his subject, nature, as the ideal subject, and he wishes it be considered in
"wide Survey." A wide survey of nature awakens not only "poetical Enthusiasm" but also the "reflection" associated with "philosophy" and the "sentiment" associated with the
"moral" realm. Thomson accounts for and even insists upon variety and variation, but in the context of this wider assessment of the seasons in "succession."
Similarly, Pope's desire to have his works considered "in the relation they bear with each other" supports a reading of the four Epistles to Several Persons as a sequence.
Considering his poetry of the 1730's, Pope emphasizes the importance of reading his works together:
My works will in one respect be like the works of Nature, much more to be liked
and understood when consider'd in the relation they bear with each other, than
when ignorantly look'd upon one by one; and often, those parts which attract most
9*7
at first sight, will appear to be not the most, but the least considerable.
Using references to both optics and understanding, Pope comes out against the initial
"attraction" of the reader to certain "parts." He suggests that one consider the relationship the works bear to one another, and that, in so doing, passages which appear unimportant will be more, not less, "considerable."
These are rather early statements about poems revised into the 1740's. Thomson's
"Preface" to "Winter" (1726) does not appear in a revised form in subsequent editions of
The Seasons. And, although the opus magnum project to which Pope's letter might refer
26 SEA p. 305. II. 75-79. 27 "Pope to [Jonathan] Swift, 16 February 1732-33," CP III, 348. 8
"occupied Pope centrally from late 1729 to 1735," it concerned him only "sporadically thereafter until his death in 1744."28 Still, both Pope and Thomson took care, throughout their careers, to tend to these long poems. The four epistles appeared on their own or consistently at the forefront of larger groupings of "Ethic Epistles, to Several Persons" throughout Pope's career. And Pope found these four Epistles to Several Persons29 important enough to "dispense"30 among his friends during his illness. The Seasons are considerable not only for the poet's careful revisions over the course of his career, but also for their popularity in his own time and in the later half of the century. Thus, it is crucial to consider the long poems of Thomson and Pope in some form of collectedness.
One can and should read the eighteenth-century long poem from front to back with a taste for unity and with an eye for the work's essential parallels and contradictions. And the enterprise becomes, far from without merit, necessary, particularly when studying the poets' comparisons of nature and human nature.
This thesis requires its own kind of selection. In the case of Pope, considering the four epistles as a sequence functions as a response to what has been, for many of Pope's critics, less often an accomplished task than a desire expressed whilst making other substantial contributions to Pope scholarship.32 Following the examples of Edwards,
Leranbaum 1. For support of Pope's continued interest in the project in the 1740's see Cassandra C. Pauley, Alexander Pope's Opus Magnum as Palladian Monument. Diss., University of South Florida, 2003. See ESP vi, and Epistles to Several Persons [London, 1744]. 30 Pope, according to Spence, observed, "Here I am like Socrates, dispensing my morality among my friends, just as I am dying. (On dispensing about some of his Ethic Epistles as presents, about three weeks before we lost him)," in Joseph Spence, Observations. Anecdotes, and Characters of Books and Men. Collected from Conversation. Ed. James Osbourne, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1966) I. 261, no. 631, 10 May 1744. 31 Regarding Thomson's popularity, see Ralph Cohen, The Art of Discrimination (Berkeley: University of California, 1964); Douglas Grant, James Thomson: Poet of The Seasons (London: Cresset, 1951); James Sambrook, James Thomson (1700-1748): A Life (New York: Oxford, 1991); Richard Terry ed., James Thomson: Essays for the Tercentenary (Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 2000); Mary Jane Scott. 32 John Sitter, "The Argument of Pope's Epistle to Cobham,'" Studies in English Literature 17 (1977) 448; Ellen Pollak, The Poetics of Sexual Myth (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1985); Leranbaum 64nl. 9
Leranbaum, and Howard Weinbrot,33 yet with even more emphasis upon the repetition of images and ideas over the course of the poems, I present a close reading of the four epistles as a sequence in reference to Pope's comparison of nature and human nature. I present a detailed assessment of Pope's use and re-use of images over the course of the sequence. In so doing, I depend upon F. W. Bateson's (Twickenham) edition of the
Epistles to Several Persons (1951) while making additional references, when necessary, to versions of the 1730's and 40's. I use this edition because Bateson relies upon the
1744 edition of Pope's Epistles to Several Persons and attempts to account for and to eliminate the "interference" of William Warburton in the subsequent editions of Pope's poems.35
In the case of Thomson, whose four seasons are more extensive than Pope's epistles, I read sequentially within two seasons, "Summer," and "Winter," considering the unity of sections or scenes in the poem which have chiefly been considered inconsistent or unrelated. As with my analysis of the network of images in the Epistles to
Several Persons, I read the sequences closely, considering Thomson's comparison of natural phenomena and human behaviour. I rely upon James Sambrook's edition of The
Seasons (1981). Sambrook uses, as his copy-text, the 1746 edition of the poem, the last proof-read by Thomson. And I refer, when necessary, to the earlier versions of the poem, many of which are noted in Sambrook's admirable edition.
Howard Weinbrot, Alexander Pope and the Traditions of Formal Verse Satire (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1982). 34 Many of these resources are available in the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library at the University of Toronto. See also ECCO, Gale Group,
Since I choose to read these poems sequentially, my comparison of the two poets takes place largely via the theses I raise. Pope and Thomson were introduced to one another in 1725 and remained friendly. Thomson pauses to praise Pope's Homer in The
Seasons (1730q.ff.), and Pope pauses, briefly, to return such praise in The Dunciad
(1743).36 While little correspondence survives between the poets,37 their works teach a similar lesson and via similar methods. Both Pope and Thomson suggest that the hidden order in nature compares to a hidden order in the self. Defining imagination as the ability to form images and ideas in the mind, particularly things or qualities not seen or experienced directly, I argue that both poets teach the imagination of images in the mind which promote virtue in the self. And they emphasized the necessity of acting, consciously, upon such presumed moral excellence. Such virtuous action, furthermore, requires both the imagination of and the benevolent response to the sentiments of others and to the genius in the landscape. Thus, both poets espouse the employment of the imagination for the purpose of cultivating moral excellence. Below, I briefly consider the importance of natural and human philosophy in the eighteenth-century and the poet's incorporation of natural philosophical discourse over the course of the long poem, particularly as this relates to the imagination.
From Poetry as Defence to Poetry of the Imagination
Recent criticism of Thomson and Pope suggests that their poems operate as defences of poetry. Shaun Irlam and Stefanie Lethbridge both argue that Thomson
36 "Winter" 550-4 (in 1730q.ff.); "In reprinting Wi. 553-4 (slightly misquoted) among the 'Testimonies of Authors' in The Dunciad (1743) Pope repaid T's compliment by an allusion to the 'elegant and philosophical poem of the Seasons,' SEA 388n550-4. 37 Pope admits to having written to Thomson, "Pope to Hill, 5 Nov, 1738," CP III, 145. No direct correspondence appears to have survived. Indirect good wishes or concern between the two poets appears inCPIII, 158; IV, 132, 145, 151, 166, 167, 219; JTLD 67, 86-7, 106, 110, 123, 126, 128, 186. 11 emphasizes the poet's moral and cultural authority in The Seasons, while Lisa Steinman suggests that the poem is a failed defence.39 John Sitter hypothesizes that Pope's project in the Epistles might also emphasize the importance of the poet and poetry.40 In reckoning these poems "defences" of poetry, these critics sometimes imply that the poet acts as a seer or visionary in the poems. And they confirm that the poet is concerned with imagination or fancy, two terms which are relatively interchangeable in the works I consider, here, and which signify the ability to form images and ideas in the mind, particularly those not seen or experienced directly.41
One reason to defend poetry in the first half of the eighteenth century arises in reaction to the influence of philosophy, those ways of seeing both humankind and nature made popular by Locke and Newton, among others, and the projects of observation and experiment inspired by Bacon in the seventeenth century and implemented by members of the Royal Society.42 Stephanie Lethbridge argues that poetry in the first half of the eighteenth-century functioned as a "defence" because it came "under threat" as both a
"culturally relevant force" and on "economic grounds." In terms of economics,
Lethbridge cannily observes that poetry was "under threat" due to the emergence of philosophical or natural philosophical writing in the market-place and because of increased competition for patronage between poets and philosophers.
Lethbridge acknowledges her affinity with Irlam, Stefanie Lethbridge, James Thomson's Defence of Poetry (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 2003) 24. [Henceforth referred to as Defence]. 39 Lisa Steinman, "Milton's Evening Ear," Masters of Repetition (New York: Saint Martin's, 1998) 9-50 (cit. in Defence 23). 40 Sitter 435-49. 41 Fairer and Sambrook both confirm that the terms were used interchangeably in the period. David Fairer, Pope's Imagination (Dover: Manchester UP, 1984) 2-3; SEA 223n459. 42 Sir Isaac Newton, Opticks. With a Forward by Albert Einstein (New York: Dover, 1952), and Principia. Ed. Stephen Hawking (Philadelphia: Running Press, 2002); John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Ed. John W. Yolton (London: J. M. Dent, 1976); Francis Bacon The Advancement of Learning. (London: J. M. Dent, 1950); Thomas Sprat, A History of the Royal Society, Eds. Jackson Cope and Jarold Jones (St. Louis: Washington University Studies, 1958). 12
In terms of "cultural relevance," poetry, though attacked in this regard for centuries, came under a particular kind of scrutiny after the publication of Bacon's The
Advancement of Learning (1605). Bacon classifies history, poetry and philosophy as separate interests; and, he favours (divine and natural) philosophy because of its role in the advancement of learning.43 From this, Lethbridge argues, "came a systematically developed and widely argued distinction between those disciplines that depended on the accumulation of knowledge for their progress" such as natural philosophy, "and those that did not, like poetry and eloquence."44 This distinction is reflected in the controversy between the ancients and moderns. Both the ancients and moderns claimed that poetry was losing ground as a moral force. While proponents of the ancients "thought contemporary poetry had lost its claim to provide beauty and insight," the moderns, at least, modern proponents of natural philosophy over poetry "proclaimed it a pursuit which had been superseded by more advanced types of knowledge."45 The resulting struggle, according to Lethbridge, was for poetry to retain or re-establish its "truth value."46 Hence, the poet, writing in the age of Newton and Locke, or, more particularly, in the age of Newtonianism and Lockeanism,47 must present a defence of poetry.
The case of the moderns, or at least, those moderns who believed that natural philosophical thinking trumped poetry in terms of its contribution to knowledge, might indeed have posed more of "threat" to poets than the case of the "ancients" whose genius
43 Defence 32. 44 Defence 33. 45 Defence 36. See also R. F. Jones, Ancients and Moderns (New York: Dover, 1961); Joseph M. Levine, The Battle of the Books (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1991). 46 Defence 41. 47 Defence 36ff. Lethbridge borrows the phrase from David Spadafora, The Idea of Progress in Eighteenth- Century Britain (New Haven: Yale UP, 1990) 9: "By 1727, when Sir Isaac Newton died, the great seventeenth-century revolution in thought had ended, as for the most part had the Augustan fear of science. But if the age of Newton and Locke was over, the age of Newtonianism and Lockeanism had just begun." 13 the poets admired and emulated. Poetry's "ornamental language," as Lethbridge notes, was said to obscure knowledge, and to be "ill suited for the separation of ideas." Thus, to those moderns, poetry either became useless and thus, in need of defending, or, perhaps more interestingly, a "positive threat" to the progress of understanding.49 Bacon, as R. F. Jones argues, distrusted words, arguing that "language does not impart to the mind a true or accurate picture of material reality, but fills it with more or less fantastic ideas of nature."50 And Locke, in his discussion of the abuse of words, tempered
(though, perhaps, he might simply be said to have expanded) this concern by implying that words have both proper and improper uses.51
In his discussion of Pope's Imagination, David Fairer presents a similar consideration of a divide between "poetry" and "truth," though he considers
"imagination" rather than "poetry." Fairer argues that there existed, by the mid- eighteenth-century,
a long tradition of thought about the imagination, from Renaissance faculty
psychology through to the empirical philosophy of Hobbes and Locke, whereby
imagination and judgment serve different ends, one in the realm of beauty and
'secondary qualities', the other in the real knowable world of 'truth'. According to
this tradition, imagination is wayward, pleasure-loving, amoral, superficial, and
sets up false values; whereas judgment presents a truth which is stable and
objectively known.52
48 Defence 42. 49 Defence 43. 50 R. F. Jones 48. 51 Locke III. ix.-x. 2 Fairer 61. 14
Both Pope and Thomson take part in a project which might be considered, if not a
"defence" of "imagination" in general, then, as Fairer suggests of Pope's "Epistle to a
Lady," a lesson in the '"right use' of imagination."53 While Fairer limits his consideration of the imagination to the one epistle,54 he identifies Pope's desire if not to equate imagination and truth, then to ally them in the poem. The relationship between imagination and truth, Pope urges, "must be a living one which survives by reconciliation."5
For Pope and Thomson, both poetry and philosophy are pursuits of imagination and judgment. The interests of Thomson and Pope in Locke's Treatise and in Newton's
Opticks and Principia have been duly noted. Marjorie Hope Nicolson, Alan Dugald
McKillop, Herbert Drennon, and Thomas Reisner all point to Thomson's interest in natural philosophy and in Locke.56 Likewise, Nicolson, George Rousseau, and William
Powell Jones provide a background for Pope's interest in the natural world and in
Locke's revolution of "ideas."57 Both poets incorporated philosophical materials in their poems. In addition, they were avid gardeners and thus, direct experimenters in nature.
And Pope and Thomson identify both the proper and improper use of imagination in works of natural and human philosophy. If Newton and Locke identify a hidden order or truth in the natural world or in the human mind, then the contemplation of this order
3J Fairer 111. 54 Fairer 7. 55 Fairer 111. 56 Marjorie H. Nicolson, Newton Demands the Muse (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1946) and others; A.D. McKillop, The Background of Thomson's Seasons (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1942); Herbert Drennon, "James Thomson's Contact with Newtonianism and His Interest in Natural Philosophy," PMLA 49.1 (Mar 1934) 71-80, and "The Source of James Thomson's 'The Works and Wonders of Almighty Power,'" Modern Philology 32.1 (Aug 1934) 33-36; Thomas A. Reisner, "The Vast Eternal Springs: Ancient and Modern Hydrodynamics in Thomson's 'Autumn,'" Mosaic 10.4 (1977) 97-110. 57 Marjorie H. Nicolson and G. S. Rousseau, "This Long Disease, My Life": Alexander Pope and the Sciences (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1968); William Powell Jones, The Rhetoric of Science (Berkeley: University of California, 1966). See also Chapter One. 15 requires imagination, the ability to form images and ideas in one's own mind.58 The cosmic and optical theories of Newton and the new, Lockean "understanding" require that one must imagine, and, in response, judge that which is difficult to see with the naked eye or which is impossible to physically extract from the mind or body.
Additionally, when Newton and Locke expose limits to human perception (Newton's studies of misshapen eyes in the Opticks, for instance, or Locke's wariness of the imperfection of words, the abuse of language, or the limits of human knowledge), they associate this perception with the falsehood and illusion Fairer associates with the tradition of criticizing the poetic imagination. Moreover, the imagination and judgment of the best enlightenment philosophers were not always equalled by their followers or imitators. As R. F. Jones observes:
The chief sin which the satirists find in the experimentalists was the glaring faults
of judgment which failed to distinguish between the worth of things and which
proposed silly and impossible projects. The importance ascribed to small and
insignificant matters by the scientific emphasis upon non-rational observation
violated the hierarchy of values upon which neo-classical writers insisted. The
naturalistic tendency of the new science and the utilitarian and vocational ideas of
education which this science fostered were repugnant to the humanism of Pope's
age.60
Experimental science, observation of nature, and philosophies of human understanding
often resulted in the failure of the individual thinker or experimenter to discern a worthy
58 See also Marjorie H. Nicolson, Science and Imagination (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1962). 59 Newton, Opticks 15-16; Locke III. ix.-x., and IV. 60 R. F. Jones, "The Background of the Attack on Science in the Age of Pope," Pope and His Contemporaries. Eds. James L Clifford and Louis A. Landa (Oxford: Clarendon, 1949) 112-13. 16 object or pursuit from insignificant matter(s). This is not only a failure of judgment but also a failure of imagination.
Since both the proper and improper use of the imagination could be applied to philosophy as well as to poetry, one of the chief interests of the poet writing in an age of
Newtonianism and Lockeanism was to champion the alliance of both the poetic and the philosophical imagination not only with truth, but also with virtue or benevolence. In those Spectator essays known as "The Pleasures of the Imagination,"61 Joseph Addison discusses the person of "Polite Imagination." He attempts to define a use or purpose of the imagination which produces pleasure, identifies truth and promotes upright or virtuous behaviour. Addison treats the imagination not as a "self-destructive" or
"superficial" faculty, but as a means of both taking pleasure in and making property of the landscape.62 The "Man of Polite Imagination," Shaun Mam suggests, is an arbiter of taste, a person able to "discriminate, to differentiate, and, on the basis of these differences, to pronounce judgment."63 This person is exceptional:
A man of Polite Imagination is let into a great many Pleasures that the Vulgar are
not capable of receiving. He can converse with a Picture, and finds an agreeable
companion in a Statue. He meets with a secret refreshment in Description, and
often feels a greater Satisfaction in the Prospect of Fields and Meadows, than he
does in the Possession. It gives him, indeed, a kind of Property in every thing he
sees, and makes the most rude, uncultivated Parts of Nature minister to his
Pleasures: So that he looks upon the World, as it were, in another Light, and
61 Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, The Spectator Nos. 411-21, Ed. Donald Bond, Vol. Ill (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1965) 62 Fairer 88. 63 Irlam 90. 17
discovers in it a Multitude of Charms, that conceal themselves from the
Generality of Mankind.64
Both Pope and Thomson remain proponents of a "Polite Imagination." They compare their imaginations and those of a select few (among them, Newton) to those of the
"Vulgar" sort. The "Polite" person finds beauty and pleasure in what is concealed from the eye or in what appears, on the surface, to be "rude." The capacity to make "Property" of everything in one's line of view remains restricted to a particular person of sensibility or taste, a person of virtue. Still, they consider the potential for such virtue to exist on a more expansive level.
By the end of Addison's piece, the man of imagination depends less upon direct observation of the outside world and more upon his own vision, his creation or recreation of nature. The kind of retirement which seems to shut out the natural world enables the most powerful vision of nature:
A man in a Dungeon is capable of entertaining himself with Scenes and
Landskips more beautiful than any that can be found in the whole Compass of
Nature.65
Indeed, it takes a person described almost as a slave or prisoner to produce a scene of beauty. As Mam argues, close confinement becomes a means of facilitating imagination:
The cult of retirement, or 'literary loneliness,' [...] begins to look like an allegory
for literary specificity in which the isolated personification emerges as the highest
realization of literariness, and the solitary poet emerges as its specular
counterpart, an allegorical agency who is little more than the personification of
Addison, The Spectator. No. 411, III, 538 (also qtd. in Irlam 93). Addison III, 537 (also qtd. in Irlam 105). 18
his own imagination. This is daemonization with a vengeance and an
identification that is at once an immolation but also a purification, an
intensification of poetic consciousness and a mode of success surely beyond the
poet's wildest hopes.66
This kind of visionary revelling contributes to and defines the "taste" of the polite person, the poet, and perhaps the philosopher, too. However, as Mam suggests, one risks the polarization of imagination and sense, of imaginative poetry and "a descriptive poetry that mimes nature."67 Thomson and Pope both wonder about the power and productivity of this kind of license and detachment. They are wary of the negative aspects of this kind of imagination and write a poetry that remains skeptical of it. Still, as they question the potential abuses of the power to create a landscape in the mind, they compare those abuses with their own visions and with the "Polite Imaginations" of the people they admire. And they use their comparisons of the polite and the vulgar imagination to emphasize the need to use the imagination to identify and to cultivate moral excellence in the individual and in society.
Again, there is no doubt that Pope and Thomson defend poetry and the poetic imagination. Lethbridge argues that Thomson's aim in The Seasons is to
establish the necessity for and the usefulness of poetic discourse, complementary
to the discourse of science, at times even superior, for the perception and
improvement of nature and society. [...] Thomson develops the emotional and
imaginative relevance of poetry in contrast to the rational and factual relevance of
Warn 110. Irlam 92. 19
scientific discourse. [...] he claims the lasting relevance of poetry as a cultural
force.68
These sequences, when read as "defences" of the genre, attest to the authority of the poet and his words. However, the poet of nature in the second quarter of the eighteenth- century does not relegate poetry to the realm of the imagination and philosophy to the realm of reason or truth. Rather, the poet reveals an amount of imagination and judgment available to both the poet and the philosopher.
The overall purpose of both The Seasons and The Epistles to Several Poems is to teach the proper employment of the imagination. Both Thomson and Pope refer to nature and to philosophy to suggest how consistency of human behaviour might exist despite seeming evidence to the contrary. The hidden order in nature compares to a hidden order among humankind and in the individual. Thus, both poets espouse the employment of the imagination in order to cultivate moral excellence within. And they emphasize the importance of acting in regard to this wished-for excellence. This requires the imagination of the divinity of others and in the landscape, though it requires the self- possession or government of the individual in some distinction from others. Pope and
Thomson do not consciously champion the "subjective truth" of the imagination in the manner of the romantic poet. And they do not consider the imagination superior to or a
substitute for the real or for plain sight. However, both espouse the employment of imagination to identify and to cultivate the virtue or goodness endowed in humankind by heaven.
Defence 27-8. Fairer 59. Indeed, for Pope and Thomson, nature's genius and the individual's virtue are endowed by a benevolent heaven or God. Therefore, belief in the decay or decline of nature common to both ancients and moderns functions as a significant concern. As R. F.
Jones argues, "the idea of the decay of nature, frequently symbolized by the figure of
70 giant and dwarf [...] crops out whenever ancients and moderns clash." While proponents of the ancients saw natural decline in line with the decline of human genius and, as such, as evidence of the superiority of the ancients, proponents of the moderns did not necessarily disagree with the modern inferiority of genius in championing the progress of knowledge, nor did they need to see nature as progressive.71 At least in the seventeenth century, the theory of natural decline "laid its enervating hand upon human powers, and bred a despairing resignation to an apparently inexorable decree of fate."72
And Hobbes, as Fairer reminds us, treated "imagination" as "decaying sense," as "the vast store of images already perceived by the senses" vital to the formation of our
"attitudes, experiences, and expectations in life," though an "untrustworthy vehicle of experience."
David Spadafora denies the widespread influence of a "doctrine of progressive degeneration" in the early eighteenth century, arguing that "when contemporaries spoke of decay, as they sometimes did, they meant a decline vis-a-vis the recent past [...] or a relative difference between primitive and civilized man, not a continuous, eternal process."74 He argues that "the notion of an ever-worsening deterioration of man and
70 R. F. Jones, Ancients and Moderns 38. 71 Bacon needed a number of men to complete his projects, and did not depend on genius, per se, but on a moderate level of intelligence. See Ancients and Moderns 55. 72 Ancients and Moderns 268. 73 Fairer 54 [ref. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (London, 1651), Ed. C. B. Macpherson (Harmondsworth, 1968)1. ii.]. 74 Spadafora 35-6. 21 nature was dead by this period"75 Still, Spadafora makes room for sensitivity to decay and decline. Faith in a cyclical form of decay and renewal as opposed to perpetual decline, after all, might pose even more of a threat in its proposed repetition.
Furthermore, Jones' argument about the lingering of the older model still stands, if not because of faith in the literal likelihood of destruction then because of dependence upon the myth of perpetual decline, its metaphorical significance.
Thomson and Pope remain concerned about nature's fate and about the limitations of humankind as they correspond to and impact that fate. For the most part, however, those who "want" in Pope, and the uneducated, superstitious, and, worse, the tyrannical in the Seasons are those who profess notions of progressive degeneration. Whereas, the poets, themselves, and those they admire, align themselves with the notion of a hidden yet powerful order in the natural world and in the self, despite the evils they identify and encounter.
With this in mind, it is necessary to pause, if only briefly, to consider the poets' treatment of those philosophers aside from Locke and Newton who might be said to have been early influences upon their thinking about nature and human nature. Maynard
Mack's consideration of Pope's desire to steer between "the extremes of doctrines seemingly opposite," as Pope proposes in the "Design" of An Essay on Man, suits my purpose here. By "extremes," Pope
may have meant the Stoic and Epicurean, with their respective positions on the
dignity and (in the popular view of Epicureanism) ingloriousness of man, and on
apathy and activity as the supreme ethical goods. Or he may have meant the
egoistic theory of Hobbes and Mandeville on one hand and the benevolistic theory
75 Spadafora 36. 22
of Shaftesbury and Hutcheson on the other, from both of which he can be said to
have incorporated attitudes without accepting either wholly.
While both poets observe human injustice and treachery, Pope and Thomson do not view people as chiefly inglorious or egoistic, as Mack remarks of Mandeville and Hobbes.77
The poets might consider the interchange or economy of Mandeville's "private vices" bringing about "public benefits" as they envision the reconciliation of extremes in nature and among mankind. And they might point to the manner in which vices do sometimes benefit others. However, both poets come to condemn the "charitable Vanity"78 and
"licentious" character of those who support such credos.
By teaching people to imagine the order in creation so as to imagine the order in the self, Pope and Thomson tend towards "benevolistic" theory. The poets might, then, resemble Shaftesbury and Hutcheson, who both promoted notions of a "moral sense" reconsidered later in the period by Hume.80 For Shaftesbury, moral sense signifies, simply, a sense of right or wrong, while, for Hutcheson, moral sense applies to one's ability to observe and to approve of the charitable and utterly disinterested actions of others. Faith in the widespread potential for goodness in humankind and in nature such as Shaftesbury's, and faith in the potential to perform and to appreciate self-less
"Introduction," An Essay on Man. Ed. Maynard Mack, Vol. Ill-i, The Twickenham Edition of the Poems of Alexander Pope (London: Methuen, 1950) xl. 77 Hobbes, Leviathan; Bernard Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees (1705, 1714) Ed. Phillip Harth (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970). 78 "Burlington" 172. 79 "Winter" 322. 80 Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury, An Inquiry Concerning Virtue or Merit (un authorized ed., 1699), corrected version included in Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times (1711), Ed. Lawrence E. Klein (Cambridge UP, 1999); Francis Hutcheson An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (1725), Ed. Wolfgang Leidhold (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2004), and An Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections. With Illustrations on the Moral Sense (1728), Ed Andrew Ward (Manchester: Clinamen, 1999); David Hume later espouses a moral sense or "sentiment" in A Treatise of Human Nature (1740), Ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge, 2nd ed., Rev. P. H. Nidditch. (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1979) Bk. III. 81 Characteristics 172-3, 177-9. 23 charitable works such as Hutcheson's appears in the poems of Pope and Thomson. Both poets teach the importance of employing the imagination to develop sympathy and fellow feeling for others.
Yet, as Mack confirms, neither Pope nor Thomson take their consideration of the virtue in humankind or in the natural world to the extreme of a Shaftesbury or a
Hutcheson. That there exist "reconcil'd extremes" in nature, as Pope observes, does not mean that people do not suffer from these extremes, as Thomson proves. If "Love" is endowed in a select few or, even, in everyone at birth, this sentiment is more often oppressed or perverted than cultivated and pursued. As well, the most benevolent or charitable men or women do not prove disinterested, never entirely losing their sway or their own good humour, nor, as Pope and Thomson argue, should they. In any case, human sympathy and charity are more frequently cut off or perverted by selfishness and ill-nature, or, conversely, they become too extensive. And, in that extension, as well, one might identify an individual's "mean Self-love."
Pope and Thomson compare the vicious and virtuous imagination so as to consider the ways in which one might cultivate virtue within and treat others benevolently in a world in which a multitude, though in a less conscious, and as such, perhaps, a more despicable manner than Pope's anti-Job, Sir Balaam, "curses God and dies."84 By considering the vulgar, both poets reveal the necessity to employ of the imagination in the pursuit of virtue. As Frye argues of imaginative language:
*" "Bathurst" 168. 83 "Bathurst" 228. 84 "Bathurst" 402; Balaam is dubbed the "anti-Job" by Earl R. Wasserman, Pope's Epistle to Bathurst (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1960) 50. 24
All through history there has run a distrust and contempt for imaginative
language, and the words for story or literary narrative - myth, fable and fiction -
have all acquired a secondary sense of falsehood or something made up out of
nothing. Overcoming this perversion of language takes time and thought, and
besides, there are as many evil myths and vicious metaphors as there are evil
doctrines and vicious arguments. But the author of Hebrews goes on to talk, in the
examples he gives after his definition of faith, about the risks taken by vision, and
he suggests that such risks are guided by more effective powers than merely
subjective ones.85
Both Pope and Thomson compare external nature and human nature to suggest that a hidden and God-given order exists among humankind and within the self as in the natural world. To identify or consult one's "Light"86 is not necessarily to consult a "merely subjective" power. For these poets to imagine a light within or to perceive of one's ruling passion as a virtuous one is to realize one's relationship to the divine or one's God-given virtue, and to act, consciously, upon it. And both poets confirm the difficulty of this task.
Thomson and Pope allow for their own distrust and contempt of false vision and delusion to make for a dynamic expression of faith in the power of the imagination to identify and to cultivate moral excellence.
In my first three chapters, I consider Pope's comparison of nature and human
nature in the Epistles to Several Persons. My first chapter considers Pope's espousal, in
the "Epistle to Cobham," of the use of the imagination to identify the "Ruling Passion,"
Northrop Frye, The Double Vision (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1991) 19-20. "Burlington" 45. 25 the motive that is "thus, perhaps, the cause of most we do."87 Pope begins this poem with an array of references to human and natural philosophy which lead him to suggest that this "cause" appears "dim,"88 at least when it appears unaccompanied by human determination, reason, or will. Yet, Pope refers to such resignation to advocate for the proper employment of the imagination, the need to imagine and to act upon one's passion as if it were a virtuous passion. This passion is endowed in the individual by God and must be engaged in the service of the good.
Pope then considers the importance of imagining the sentiments of others and of treating these sentiments with generosity. In my second chapter, I consider Pope's reprise of the references to external nature in the "Epistle to Cobham" in the "Epistle to a
Lady." Here, Pope espouses the imagination of the needs of others not so as to please the self, solely, but, to the extent that this is possible, to please or gratify others for their sake.
Pope refers to natural phenomena and to his employment of similar references in "The
Epistle to Cobham" to acknowledge "Most Women's"89 propensity for sympathy while exposing their perversion of such sympathy. Yet in so doing, Pope begins to suggest that
the ruling passion is a potentially virtuous passion. Not to consider one's passion as a
virtue and not to treat others as if they were as divine as oneself are failures of
imagination and judgment. Pope's description of his lady's merits emphasizes her ability
to imagine, understand, and respond to the feelings and needs of others without the resignation of will or spirit of which Pope is often criticized in regard to his depiction of
90 women.
87 "Cobham" 50. 88 "Cobham" 49. 89 "Lady" 2. 90 See Chapter Two. 26
In the third chapter, I consider the "Epistle to Bathurst" and the "Epistle to
Burlington" as complementary poems. Referring to the imagery of natural change and changeableness in the first two poems of the sequence, Pope teaches the '"right use' of imagination" by identifying the necessity for and espousing the cultivation of "Good
Sense."91 In the "Epistle to Bathurst," Pope confirms that his own view of "reconcil'd extremes"92 in nature and humankind is a radical benevolence of mind and imagination.
Pope depends not upon the visions of decay and decline he associates with figures of avarice in his poem, but upon a vision of a hidden order or balance in the world and among humankind. Pope reframes the vices of prodigality and miserliness into which he
"sorts"93 men at the outset of the poem. Considering these as virtues ("Good-nature" and
"Self-love")94 within the individual which might be taken to "mad" or "mean" extremes,
Pope espouses "Good Sense." A person of good sense envisions an order in humankind and in nature created by a benevolent, harmonizing power, and imitates or initializes that power in his or her mind. In these poems, Pope continues to suggest the importance of sympathy for others, and he extends this fellow feeling to the natural world itself. Yet he emphasizes the necessary self-possession required of the person of good sense.
In the final two chapters, I read portions of The Seasons sequentially to identify
Thomson's similar emphasis upon employing the imagination to identify one's virtues
and to cultivate sympathy for others. The fourth chapter presents a close reading of
"Summer," lines 1104 through 1370.1 suggest that when read in the context of the
sequence in which they appear, a sequence which begins, notably, with a thunderstorm,
91 "Burlington" 43. 92 "Bathurst" 168. 93 "Bathurst" 13. 94 "Bathurst" 228. 27 the popular love stories in "Summer" are both sexually suggestive and morally instructive. Like Pope, Thomson compares human behaviour to the dynamism of the natural world to license reliance upon a driving impulse and to prompt the identification and cultivation of the love of well-matched pair.
In the fifth chapter, I consider Thomson's depiction of the imagination of the dying swain in "Winter." One of the aspects of "Winter" for which Thomson has been charged with inconsistency is the transition between his depiction of the death of the swain and the moral he draws from the narrative.95 Recognizing consistency, I argue that in the lines immediately following the death scene, Thomson repeatedly refers to the swain, mourning the loss of his tender imagination to promote the kind of fellow feeling which inspires social change. Thomson dramatizes the reconciliation of extreme forms of violence in the natural world to suggest that while the swain's loss is unavoidable, one must employ one's sympathy as a means of inspiring and effecting social change. I then briefly consider Thomson's allusions to the swain sequence over the course of "Winter," where he teaches fellow feeling and "active Government,"96 a notion similar to Pope's
"Good Sense." And, in my conclusion, I pause to consider the manner in which
Thomson and Pope employ the terms "visionary" and "vision," respectively, in their poems to espouse the employment of the imagination in the pursuit of moral excellence.
"Winter" 276-321 and 322-423, respectively. "Winter" 950. I. NATURE AND IMAGINATION: THE RULING PASSION IN POPE'S "EPISTLE TO COBHAM"
David Fairer argues that Alexander Pope's "Epistle to a Lady" explores the
"superficialities and wrong sense of priorities" of the imagination in order to teach the
'"right use' of the imagination," its power to "illuminate inner life."1 When one considers
Pope's references to nature and natural phenomena over the course of the Epistles to
Several Persons, the '"right use' of the imagination" becomes the lesson of the collection as a whole. In the "Epistle to Cobham," Pope refers to natural phenomena to espouse the employment of the imagination for the purposes of identifying one's ruling passion and considering that passion a potential virtue. And Pope advocates acting determinedly upon that imagined virtue.
Pope shared his opinion that "a prevailing passion in the mind is brought with it into the world and continues till death" with Joseph Spence as early as May, 1730,2 and he treats the "Ruling Passion" extensively in An Essay on Man, where, as James Noggle suggests, it quite often appears "deceptive," the conqueror of "Reason." This deceptiveness applies, as well, to the "Ruling Passions" of the characters in the "Epistle to Cobham" (174). Pope's "characters," as Noggle argues, are largely those whose
"ruling passions" "appear to have the unbreakable power to prevent" the subjects "from ever recognizing" that they have them.4 Still, this failure in most people does not suggest that "the ruling passion comes to defeat itself as an insight into the mysterious complexity
1 David Fairer, Pope's Imagination 111. 2 Joseph Spence, Observations I, 130 (qtd. in John Sitter, "The Argument of Pope's Epistle to Cobham" 435n3). 3 James Noggle, The Skeptical Sublime (New York: Oxford UP, 2001) 165. 4 Noggle 165.
28 of individuals."5 Nor, as Thomas A. Stumpf observes, does Pope "condemn [...] the specious consistency of the ruling passion."6 As Rebecca Ferguson observes, no matter how absurd the passion, Pope never fails to outline "the pitch of absurdity represented by a totally undirected ruling passion."7 Over the course of the "Epistle to Cobham" and the four Epistles to Several Persons as a whole, Pope advocates employing the imagination to identify the ruling passion, that motive that is "thus, perhaps, the cause of most we do," as a virtuous passion (50). And he espouses the cultivation of that passion with reason, good sense, and taste.
Like James Thomson in The Seasons, Pope refers to nature to suggest how consistency of human behaviour might exist despite seeming evidence to the contrary.
Both poets compare the hidden order that natural philosophers discover behind various natural "prodigies" to the "plain" motive that underlies human actions (208-9). At the outset of the poem (15-50), and thus, at the outset of the collection as a whole, Pope presents an extensive discussion of the "Mind" of man by drawing from natural history, hydrography, the "dissection" room, Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding and Newton's Opticks (18, 39). As I argue, Pope employs this array of conceits to exemplify the notion that "Men may be read, as well as Books too much" (10). In so doing, Pope suggests that those who seek to understand character too much resign themselves or their imaginations to something "dim" (49). And Pope succeeds in
condemning such resignation over the course of the poem.
5Nogglel68. 6 Thomas A. Stumpf, "Pope's 'To Cobham,' 'To A Lady,' and the Traditions of Inconstancy," Studies in Philology 67 (1970) 355. 7 Rebecca Ferguson, The Unbalanced Mind (Brighton: Harvester, 1986) 102. 30
Pope presents this opening example of a wayward imagination, nonetheless, to reveal the role of the imagination in establishing character, and to espouse the employment of the imagination in the pursuit of virtue. To an extent, Pope's further references to nature in the poem, including his "Gem and Flow'r" conceit (87-100) and his talk of "Comets," "Wind," and "Climes" (209, 64, 166), continue to exemplify his maxim about excessive reading, presenting little relief from the fatigue the enthusiastic proto-philosopher experiences in searching for a "Principle of action" in man (37).
However, Pope refers to external nature in the central section of the poem to consider the possibility that the resignation of the imagination to something "dim" requires a wilful and potentially vicious perversion of the virtue endowed in humankind at birth (49), a theory he expands upon in the "Epistle to a Lady." And Pope compares the dark fancy or imagination of the reader of character in excess which he presents at the poem's outset with that of Wharton, and with both the vigorous love of his friend Cobham and the vigorous ambitions of those whose vices he nonetheless condemns at the poem's close. In so doing, Pope espouses the individual's employment of the imagination in identifying and cultivating the ruling passion as a virtuous passion.
Throughout the epistle, Pope emphasizes that the identification of that passion
endowed in humankind by nature or God requires an act of imagination. And he carefully
espouses the vision of the virtuous in opposition to the delusion, or as Thomas Edwards
calls it, the "mad spirituality"9 of the vicious, and in opposition, likewise, to the notion
associated with Pyrrhonian skepticism that "human behaviour is nothing but shifting, and
8 Again, I use the terms "imagination" and "fancy" interchangeably, as the terms are synonymous in the poems. See SEA 223n459; Fairer 2-3. Pope was "in fact an advocate for a traditional materialism of a limited sort," Thomas Edwards, This Dark Estate. 62-3. 31 inconstancy."1 Identification of the ruling passion might not be possible for everyone, nor is everyone's ruling passion likely to be a virtuous one. Yet, as Pope suggests in the
"Epistle to a Lady," "Lusts" are perverted forms of the "Love" endowed at birth.11 Still, if in "The Epistle to Cobham," and throughout the four Epistles, Pope promotes what
James Grantham Turner identifies in Thomson as a "sensory elitism,"12 an awareness of a limited amount of people able to identify and to cultivate that virtue, he nonetheless argues for the identification and the cultivation of such virtue. Thus, Pope's own insights into nature and contemporary advances in natural philosophy suggest the idea of underlying order which makes possible a visionary pursuit of the ruling passion.
Reading Men Too Much (1-50)
In the opening of the "Epistle to Cobham," Pope begins to espouse the employment of the imagination in identifying the ruling passion as a virtuous one by exemplifying a failure to do so. Pope presents an array of references to external nature with which he accounts for the apparent difficulty of understanding character (15-50). In so doing, Pope suggests that philosophy is an imaginative pursuit. Yet Pope considers the ways in which the imagination might be employed to stymie rather than to aid understanding, observing the resignation of the person who reads "Men" too much (10).
Indeed, at the outset of the poem, Pope presents a rather disconcerting version of what he reveals, later, as his theory of the ruling passion: "Something as dim to our internal view /
Is thus, perhaps, the cause of most we do" (49-50).
Michel de Montaigne, Essays of Michael. Seigneur de Montaigne. Vol. 2, Trans. Charles Cotton, 4 (qtd. inNoggle 134). 1' See Chapter Two. 12 James Grantham Turner, '"Illustrious Depravity' and the Erotic Sublime," The Age of Johnson 2 (1989) 25. 32
Particularly in regard to this opening survey of human nature and to Pope's initial inability to identify the "dim" cause (49), recent scholarship has considered Pope's engagement with skeptical philosophy and with the philosophy of John Locke (1632-
1704). Both Christopher Fox and James Noggle have argued that Pope alludes to the skeptical philosophy of Michel de Montaigne (1533-92) and Pierre Charron (1541-1603) to whom he refers in the poem and to the Pyrrhonian skepticism of Sextus Empiricus
(2nd or 3rd century A.D.).14 Fox adds to this a consideration of Pope's treatment of
Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689), characterizing the relationship between Pope's treatment of skepticism and Lockeanism as a shift from epistemology to ontology:
In Montaigne [...] no matter how much the soul could be affected [...] it was
always, nonetheless assumed to be there. With Locke's empirical difficulties in
finding the soul and his revolutionary view of the self-in-consciousness, the
appeal to the 'differences within man' took a dramatic turn [...] It became not
simply a logical (or what we would call an 'epistemological') question, but an
ontological one, as well [...] [The] self will not stay for observation, because it is
a continually fleeting thing, lost in the very moment we attempt to find it.
Developing the 'differences within man,' Pope plays with this idea, though [...]
he does not take it to the conclusion of a Hume.15
13 "Cobham" 146-7; See Christopher Fox, "Pope, Perhaps, and Sextus: Skeptical Modes in Moral Essay I," English Language Notes 29.2 (December 1991) 37-48; Pierre Charron, Of Wisdome. 2 vols, Trans. George Stanhope, 2nd ed. (London, 1707); Montaigne. 14 Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism. Vol. 1, Trans. R. G. Bury, Loeb (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1933). 15 Fox 45. See also Noggle 134; David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature. 33
While Noggle remains dubious of Pope's emphasis on a Lockean "self-in-consciousness" as the "modern problem of other minds" in the poem,16 the consensus among these scholars is that Pope drew from these philosophers not to express Pyrrhonian skepticism, that is, not to emphasize his inability to confirm any knowledge of character as true or false, but in order to become open to a "wealth of possible motives and causes necessarily excluded from dogmatic accounts"17 of human character, to use skepticism as a tool "for what might roughly be called a 'method of preliminary doubt' which leads to a new discovery of the 'ruling passion.'"18
However, among these scholars and among the wider range of critics who discuss the ruling passion in this epistle, most are loath to grant to Pope his persistent faith in the ruling passion, concentrating upon Pope's tentativeness in presenting the theory19 or considering the ruling passion as a mode of generalization which proves a stumbling block to understanding character. Yet I align myself with Rebecca Ferguson by confirming that the generality of the ruling passion does not diminish one's ability to comprehend the complexity of an individual's actions. Pope's references to nature and human nature in the poem's opening, as with his later references to the natural world, reveal that Pope champions the ruling passion in an ironic tone or in a seemingly tentative but nonetheless strident manner to encourage self awareness and determination in opposition to the blindness and resignation he illustrates at first.
In the opening of the poem, Pope reveals the imaginative aspects of the pursuit of
an understanding of character, and hence, of the pursuit of the ruling passion, by
16 Noggle 160. 17 Noggle 162. 18 Fox 46. 19 Fox 45-6. 34 accounting for the tragic materialism of one who attempts to "read" character "too much"
(10). Thus, it is necessary to establish that the poem's "quick-step[ping]"20 and ultimately resigned opening survey of human character exemplifies such an over-reading, confirming the maxim Pope proffers early in the poem in regard to the "fate of all extremes": "Men may be read, as well as Books, too much" (9-10).
Pope presents his maxim about reading too much as a means of responding to and reassessing his friend's opinion that some of those who judge character are not qualified to do so. The poem begins, as John Sitter emphasizes, with "an argument"21 between Pope and Lord Cobham, in which Pope presents himself in dramatis personae, responding to his friend's condemnation of others. Pope questions his friend's criticism of those who "rail at" or "call" the characters of others from relatively isolated positions
(2, 7). The "Man of Books" "rails at" mankind from his study, (1-4), while the vain
"coxcomb," appears, likewise, a kind of caged-bird22 in society (5-9). And both "call"
"characters" chiefly to reproach them (7).
Pope does not disregard Cobham's assumption that these individuals' positions grant them little authority to judge character. The poem's opening "Yes," which, to
Howard Weinbrot, signifies to the "affectionate social world" of the Epistles as a group,
suggests not utter disagreement but a desire to amend or to adjust his friend's position
(1). As John Sitter observes in his division of Cobham and Pope as "reader and writer,"
this is an argument between Pope, who made his living by writing books and who was
barred, as a Catholic, from owning land or holding positions in government (and thus,
20 Sitter 441. 21 Sitter 436-7. 22 Both observers and passengers are "explicitly imaged as birds," Fox 444. 23 Weinbrot, Alexander Pope and the Traditions of Formal Verse Satire 175. 24 Sitter 439. 35 similar to both the man of books and the coxcomb), and Cobham, who maintained his family seat at Stowe, and was both a politician and soldier. Keeping in mind Pope's need to defend his position and to support his friend's general argument, Pope's exemplification of the maxim about the "fate of all extremes" proves a means of entertaining his friend by presenting a dynamic example of the failure to understand character (9). Concomitantly, Pope's consideration of an extreme failure leaves room for speculation that at least some men of books and some engaged in polite society (or the person who is a moderate in both) are proper judges of character.
Pope's initial exemplification of his maxim presents a brief version of the more extensive reading which follows (11-14; 15-50); Pope presents a preview of the tragic literalism of his personae, a literalism which he uses to exemplify a failure of imagination. Pope suggests that one reads books and men in the extreme because of one's own individual partialities or tastes. In presenting this rationale, Pope himself assumes or exemplifies the role of the extreme reader he condemns:
And yet the fate of all extremes is such,
Men may be read, as well as Books too much.
To Observations which ourselves we make,
We grow more partial for th'observer's sake;
To written Wisdom, as another's, less:
Maxims are drawn from Notions, these from Guess. (9-14)
Suggesting that we are more partial to our own "Observations" and less partial to the
"written Wisdom" of others, Pope emphasizes the self-love involved in "calling"
25 For Cobham's background and relationship to Pope, see ESP 15nHeading et passim; Maynard Mack, Alexander Pope: A Life (New York: W.W. Norton, 1985), and The Garden and the City (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1969). 36 character (11, 13, 7). As Fox suggests of later passages in the poem, these lines address
"what Montaigne in his Apology calls the tendency of 'our Condition' to accommodate
'things to itself and transform 'them according to its own posture.'"2 Acknowledging that people appear partial to their own observations for the "sake" of "th'observer," Pope makes it appear as if "th'observer," was another person entirely from the "self who made the "Observation," applying Montaigne's argument to present a rather literal version of the self-in-consciousness attributed to Locke (11-12). Pope's employment of the first-person plural "we" suggests not only a universal failing among men but also, ironically, a failing of the bifurcated self or self-in-consciousness (11-12).
Discussing the role of personal preference in making "Observations," Pope suggests an even more uncanny distinction between speaking and reading, between uttering or "calling" opinion or character and writing about it (11, 7). That one's own personal "Observations" appear distinct from "Written wisdom," requires an unnecessary distinction between speaking and writing, as if one's own opinion could not, therefore, exist as or become written wisdom, and as if another's opinion could be none other than written (11, 13). Likewise, the conclusion Pope draws sustains this inordinate distinction between writing and speaking by claiming a further division between the complexity of
written notions and the simplicity and dubiety of verbal impressions: "Maxims are drawn
from Notions, these from Guess" (14). Pope suggests that "Notions," what Locke
described as complex ideas "with their original and constant existence more in the
thought of men than in the reality of things,"27 and "Guesses" appear distinguishable not
Fox 41. John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. II. xxii. 2, and IV. vii. 12 (cit. in ESP 16nl4). 37 only because of their separation in writing and speech but also in their complexity or lack thereof.
The conclusion of line fourteen appears incomplete. Pope refers to the insubstantial opinion drawn from "Guess" only as "these," rather than with the term
"Observations" or "characters" which, drawn from "Guess," would make a finer counterpoint to the "Maxims" drawn from "Notions" (14). Unlike the maxim on
"extremes" of "reading" (9-10), line fourteen is not the kind of epigram one might simply excise from the poem and employ in one's daily life. The phrase's lack of extractability suggests that Pope does not propound the sentiment. Pope might approve of the complexity of thought which makes "Notions" distinct from "Guesses" (14). However, he would not grant this in such an extreme measure, grounding the distinction in a polarized view of oral and written wisdom, of self and other, or of self and other selves.
Notably, by expressing the opinion that the individual relies upon "Guess" as opposed to
"Notions" when calling character, Pope anticipates the concluding sentiments of the opening strides of the poem, that one who reads men too much will only be able to guess or "snatch" at character in such as way as to make them resigned to a "dim" internal view and stymie their determination (34, 49). Thus, in the four lines that follow upon his maxim on "extremes," Pope already exemplifies the kind of reading in extreme he wishes to condemn, rehearsing the more elaborate drama that follows (9).
The poem's swift and seemingly debilitating survey of human character in
reference to nature and natural philosophy in the lines that follow proves a second and
more elaborate exemplification of reading too much (15-50). Pope presents a discussion
28 See Roger D. Lund, "The Ghosts of Epigram, False Wit, and the Augustan Mode" Eighteenth-Century Life 27.2 (2003) 67-95, and "Wit, Rhyme, and Couplet: Style as Content in Pope's Art," Approaches to Teaching Pope's Poetry. Ed. Wallace Jackson and R. Paul Yoder (New York: MLA, 1993). 38 of the attempt to understand human character which appears to fail, as the speaker, or
Pope's personae, resigns his imagination, his internal view to what is dark and invisible
(49). Pope presents this failure, however, to emphasize the role of the imagination in the philosophic pursuit of character. And he begins to identify the need for the individual both to utilize the imagination in identifying the ruling passion as a virtue and to act, consciously upon that virtue.
Throughout the passage, Pope's references to external nature suggest a central stability about human character; Pope reveals the necessity of imagining a general quality or characteristic which his personae, over the course of the poem, comes to consider as a mere substantial or material form. For example, when Pope grants diversity to the human
"Mind," he also places limits upon variation, arguing not for inconsistency of character but complexity of character:
There's some Peculiar in each leaf and grain,
Some unmark'd fibre, or some varying vein:
Shall only Man be taken in the gross?
Grant but as many sorts of Mind as Moss. (15-18)
Pope's acknowledgement of the variation in "each leaf and grain" is both literal and imaginative (15). He takes account for the variation which might be seen in the "varying vein" and the "unmark'd fibre" of either "leaf or "grain" (16). The "unmark'd fibre" can be accounted for visibly as a kind of albinism or absence of a characteristic which appears present in the norm. For Pope, personally, remarking upon peculiarity in nature might be construed as memory and imagination as opposed to actual vision. George
Rousseau comments that "Pope's eyesight was such that he could rarely have detected for
29 Stumpf and Noggle, e.g. 39 himself minute peculiarities in leaf or grain."30 And with these lines, Pope suggests not only a reliance upon literal appearance to determine human character, but also a belief in the existence of "fibre" where it might not exist or where it exists in variation from a norm, an imagined if not a substantial "leaf and "grain" (15-16). This seeming materialism, on Pope's part, reveals his own desire to employ or to imagine a normative substance or characteristic which does not necessarily exist in nature but which aids in understanding original characteristics. Simultaneously, Pope points towards the materialism, or, the tragic literalism of the excessive reader of character, anticipating that
"dim" internal view.
Likewise, with his postulate that one should "Grant but as many sorts of Mind as
Moss," Pope sees variation as deviation from an imagined norm while signalling the potential frustration or anxiety this might produce when considered too long or literally
(18). Pope is not about to ignore human originality, to take man "in the gross" (17). He grants, to man, in the way that one begins a geometrical or logical proof, a diversity of
"Mind." Interestingly, though, the note to this line in the poem which Pope included in all editions from 1733-1743, and which he used, as well, to remark upon lines in The
Dunciad31 might suggest a more limited view: "There are above 300 sorts of Moss observed by Naturalists." This is the first reference in the poem to studies of the natural world which explain order or account for variety but which produce wonder in spite of or
J0 G. S. Rousseau and Marjorie Nicolson, "This Long Disease. My Life" 244. 31 In The Dunciad, Pope uses "Moss" to denote the mind at a loss: The mind, in Metaphysics at a loss, May wander in a wilderness of Moss; The head that turns at super-lunar things, Poiz'd with a tail, may steer on Wilkins' wings. (449-52) The Dunciad. Vol. V, The Twickenham Edition of the Poems of Alexander Pope, Ed. James Sutherland (New Haven: Yale UP, 1963). 32 ESP 17nl8. 40 because of their revelation. Certainly, Pope, the enthusiastic gardener and collector of moss,33 was appreciative of the variety in nature. That moss exists in hundreds of varieties suggests, of course, that the "Mind" of man far outreaches "Moss" in terms of its variation (18).
Yet, here, Pope slyly considers the limits of such variation to signal that the poor reader of character, when imagining the multitude in nature, might meet with more limitation than expansion. "Moss," in all of its various forms is still "Moss," after all, no doubt a picturesque addition to the garden or landscape, though a rather parasitic one, growing often in cracks and crevices, or as a thin covering, each tiny plant matting together to create a thin skin over the surfaces of other things.34 That the "Mind" appears akin to "Moss" is to suggest its existence as a kind of natural or organic variety as opposed to its existence as a cultivar (18). This bodes with Pope's theory of a ruling passion as an inherent characteristic, endowed at birth. But this comparison also suggests the mind's smallness or insignificance, its parasitic qualities, its taking the shape of the things it covers over. Ironically, to grant to man the variety of "300 sorts of Moss," is to make a rather low account of the plausible diversity in humankind even if one suggests, in the comparison, that man's propensity for diversity is much greater. Pope's ability to
"Grant" such a prospect emphasizes his personae's ability to imagine a multitude (18).
Yet, Pope appears to signal that his personae will be assuming a rather materialistic attitude in the lines which follow.
33 Pope kept several varieties of moss and collected petrified moss. See "Appendix C," The Garden and the City. 259-60. 34 "Moss," DEL. Johnson cites Bacon's description of moss as a "mould," and Miller's description of its detrimental effects on fruit trees [Philip Miller, Gardener's Dictionary (1731)]. DEL (1773) removes the positive citation of Thomson, "Spring" 639-4 in DEL (1755). 5 Johnson cites Miller's observation of the "impossibility" of propagating moss from "seed with any art," in "Moss," DEL. 41
Pope's references to Newton's Opticks also suggest a certain consistency in regards to personal identity or subjectivity which Pope uses to reveal the imagination required of the philosopher, in general, and to account for the tragic materialism of the reader of character in excess. The variety or diversity of man exists not only in diversity between men but also, of course, within the self:
The each from other differs, first confess;
Next, that he varies from himself no less:
Add Nature's, Custom's, Reason's, Passion's strife,
And all Opinion's colours cast on life. (19-22)
As the gesture of "Granting" men diversity turns into an imperative for a "confession" of differences between men and within man (18, 19), Pope melds his references to the skeptics and to Locke with Newton's Opticks. Pope's consideration of the difficulty of assessing character and the production of "Opinion" reprises the "argument of admixture" he used to shed doubt upon the production of "Observation" (22, 11). Yet by referring to the optics here, Pope's representation of the mind of man must be associated with the prism or, with any substantial body that has the ability to refract light. "Nature"
(likely human nature or habit), "Custom," "Reason," and "Passion" all "strive" within
(21). The "striving" abstractions, in this case, when passed through the implied prism or substance of the "Mind," produce "Opinion" (20-21). Casting one's "colours" is to present, or in this case, to impress or cast one's preferences into "life" (22). "Opinion" may "cast" its "colours on life" in a manner which suggests the potential of artificiality
and artifice, a seeming lack of substance in the final production of sentiments or judgments, perhaps something uttered as opposed to written. Thus, Pope recalls his 42 notion that "Maxims are drawn from Notions, these from Guess," suggesting the insubstantial quality of "Opinion" and presenting it, too, as "Guess" (14, 22).
Still, if man "varies" from others or from "himself," that self and other, or those
several selves exist as substantial forms (20). And, furthermore, something is borne from the initial strife. Rather than shifting white light through a prism to produce a rainbow, the variety or "rainbow" of diversified attributes combines through the substantial man or mind to produce "Opinions colours" (22). The outcome, "colours," could be either the
spectrum or its composite, light.36 Thus, Pope suggests that personal identity itself is not wholly insubstantial or elusive.37 Pope's optics suggest that there is something stable enough about the human mind or about man's several "Minds" to function as a prism for the warring elements of the psyche. With this, Pope implies that such substance should remain, for the most part, imagined, though the physical body and the brain or "Mind"
within it, of course, exists. Yet for his excessive reader of character, this substance begins to appear all too literal or substantial, particularly as the poem progresses.
The following verse paragraph, with its re-reading or reprisal of the optics of the preceding lines, reveals the personae's growing anxieties about the possibility of
"calling" character (7). Hence, Pope begins to express the resignation of imagination
which he will later condemn so as to espouse the employment of the imagination in
cultivating virtue:
Yet more; the diff rence is as great between
The optics seeing, as the objects seen,
36 Rousseau hypothesizes that "in the 1730's colour begins to disappear from Pope's poetry," replaced by light and dark effects, Rousseau 289. 37 For Pope's references to Locke in the Memoirs off,, .1 Scriblerus, see Christopher Fox, Locke and the Scriblerians (Los Angeles: University of California, 1988). 43
All Manners take a tincture from our own,
Or come discolour'd thro' our Passions shown,
Or Fancy's beam enlarges, multiplies,
Contracts, inverts, and gives ten thousand dyes. (23-8)
Again, the skeptical "argument of admixture" applies. One's own "Manners," "Passions,"
and "Fancies" affect one's assessment of the "Manners" of others, and of course, of one's
oneself, as if the self existed as a separate object or material from moment to moment
(25-6). As John Sitter suggests, '"the optics seeing' then pertains to the observer viewing
others and viewing himself."38
Here, Pope likely considers Newton's discussion of the shape of the eye as it
affects vision, particularly the "confused" vision of old men:
If the Humours of the Eye by old Age decay, so as by shrinking to make the
Cornea and the Coat of the Crystalline Humour grow flatter than before, the Light
will not be refracted enough, and for want of a sufficient Refraction will not
converge to the bottom of the Eye but to some place beyond it, and by
consequence paint in the bottom of the Eye a confused Picture, and according to
the Indistinctness of this Picture the Object will appear confused. This is the
reason of the decay of sight in old Men, and shews why their sight is mended by
Spectacles. For those Convex glasses supply the defect of plumpness in the Eye,
and by increasing the Refraction make the Rays converge sooner, so as to
convene distinctly at the bottom of the Eye if the Glass have a due degree of
• • 39 convexivity.
38 Sitter 441. 39 Newton, Opticks 15-16. See also Nicolson, Newton Demands the Muse. 44
As Newton discusses the confusion of vision in the elderly (a lack of "plumpness" in the eye which can be corrected by "convex glasses"), so an individual's "Manners,"
"Passions," and "Fancies" are themselves the temporarily substantial lenses that lead one to interpret character in both self and other. This phenomenon, this new production of
"Manners" from the old or from "Passion," "Fancy" or a mixture of the three is wonderful but, as a wonder, somewhat unsatisfactory for all of its "enlargement,"
"multiplication," "contraction," "inversion" and its laying on of false colour, "dye,"
"tincture," and "discolouration" (25-8). The process of reading human character might prove a process of self-magnification or self-love which produces not a cognizable spectrum of opinion but an array of opinion too vast to be accounted for with its "ten thousand dyes" (28). Again, the production of "Manners" from "Manners" appears less than substantial, akin to "Guess" and the spoken, as opposed to "Notions" and the written
(14). Yet Pope presents some consistency or substance of manner and passion, if not of fancy, as well. This time, it is not the mind but the disparate manners and passions which function as the temporary substances performing the conflation. And it is here that Pope begins to suggest that the "beam" of "Fancy" or imagination must be brought both to identify and to draw forth or cultivate the manners and the passions. Concomitantly, Pope emphasizes the excessive reader's tendency towards materialism.
In order to espouse the employment of the imagination in cultivating moral
excellence, Pope makes his personae's doubts about the prospect of reading human
character more pronounced by taking up an even wider range of references to external
nature. However, one must keep in mind that Pope aims to illustrate his maxim about
reading character excessively. While Pope appears to present an attitude of hapless 45 resignation, he does so to make his quest to identify the ruling passion a necessary, heroic project. Noggle argues that Pope "finds radical doubt at once attractive and repulsive, stimulating by its power to disconcert." And while he launches in to what appears to be a frustrating pronouncement of the difficulty of divining the "Principle of action" in man,
Pope presents terror and repulsion in regards to human lethargy, a dark imagination and a lack of determination of which he disapproves (37).
Concentrating even less on the mysterious quality of the produced opinion and more upon the mysterious motive or force which inspires human behaviour, Pope generates anxiety, albeit in the context of illustrating his maxim, a dramatic anxiety, about the possibility of divining a "Principle of action" in man:
Our depths who fathoms, or our shallows finds,
Quick whirls, and shifting eddies, or our minds?
Life's stream for Observation will not stay,
It hurries all too fast to mark their way.
In vain sedate reflections we wou'd make,
When half our knowledge we must snatch, not take.
On human actions reason tho' you can,
It may be reason, but it is not man:
His Principle of action once explore,
That instant 'tis his Principle no more.
Like following life thro' creatures you dissect,
You lose it in the moment you detect. (29-40)
Noggle 162. 46
The "we" of the poem implies universality, a general inability to understand character.
And it also signifies that divided or split self, the first-person plural who utters
"Observations" one moment and becomes "th'observer" the next (11-12). With "Life" presented as a "stream," Pope suggests that the very energy and activity of life makes
"Observation" impossible (31). Pope appears concerned with the difficulty of divining both "depths" and "shallows" in "our minds," searching, as well for the person "who" might see or catch what appears impossible to see and catch (28-9). The desire, here, for
"sedate reflection" which would likely enable one to devise the complex Lockean
"Notions" he holds in regard appears impossible in a world in which the "half our knowledge," at least, must be "snatched" (33-4). Of course, Pope leaves room for movement, room to suggest that the other "half of knowledge is available. Still, with
"Quick whirls and shifting eddies," the speaker mourns "our" inability to pin down or
"catch" character, suggesting the veritable non-existence of the other "half (30).
Thus, Pope's "Principle of action," his first version of the ruling passion in the poem, appears a lost cause (37). John Sitter emphasizes that Pope does not, as yet, present a search for the ruling passion in particular. He does not discuss his "ruling passion" until the "final third of the poem" and only very briefly on his way of "sliding almost at once into portraiture."41 There, Pope's presentation of the ruling passion in the poem is largely affective, depending upon the reader's employment of imagination and judgment, their own identification of a general but comprehensible motive in Pope's characters. Still, the "Principle of action," here, should be considered the first draft of the
"Ruling Passion" Pope presents later in the poem, a "Principle" or virtue in man which, his speaker complains, it is difficult, if not impossible to identify physically (37, 174).
41 Sitter 443. 47
By the time Johnson composed his Dictionary, "principle" had come to mean not only a material element or "primordial substance" but also a "fundamental cause," an
"operative truth," a "motive," and a "tenet on which morality is founded." With his employment of the term, Pope signifies his own interest in "motive" and its "moral" quality or lack thereof. That "Principle" as moral character or virtue is particularly difficult to find suggests the potential absence of morals or of virtue (37-8). Yet in this light, "reason," too, appears wholly divorced from "man" (36). And, certainly, by divorcing man and reason, if not man and "Principle," Pope emphasizes that he is presenting a mode of reading in the extreme.
When Pope considers the quest to understand this "Principle" as a scientific experiment, arguing that "Like following life thro' creatures you dissect," one loses the
"Principle" in the "moment you detect," he emphasizes the tragic literalism or materialism of the excessive reader of character (39-40). If the movement from hydrography to the "dissecting" room seems somewhat awkward, it is purposefully so
(40). Pope's attempt to pin-point a "Principle of action" results in the kind of physical experiment which disables "action" in the attempt to find the source (39-40). Rousseau relates this image of "dissection" to the controversial experiments of Pope's neighbour,
Dr. Stephen Hales, to whom Pope also refers in the "Epistle to a Lady."43 Unlike Hales' haematological experiments on animals (though Pope found these, too, rather discomfiting),44 the dissection Pope discusses is not attempted to understand a physical,
42 "Principle," DEL. 43 "Lady" 194-5. 44 Dr. Stephen Hales was Pope's neighbour and friend, and an advisor on Pope's grotto design. Hales is listed as a witness of Pope's will in Mack, "Appendix D," The Garden and the City 265; Rousseau outlines Hales' dissections of live animals for his work, Haemastaticks (1733), in which he describes the flow of blood through the veins, Rousseau 104-9; Pope was not fond of Hales' experiments on dogs, Rousseau 106 and ESP 64n 198. 48 bodily process visible upon dissection (i.e. the flow of blood through the veins), nor, of course, is it performed upon an animal which might survive the procedure and whose pain and suffering might be reasoned away with less concern that for that of a human being. What Pope considers, instead, is the attempt to dissect the body to understand the motive or "Principle" of one's behaviour. One would arguably have to dissect a man's brain, and thus, extinguish his life in the attempt to divine a "Principle of Action." And to do so would make the "Principle" unknowable, unreadable (37-8).
With his dissecting-room image, Pope recalls the character-calling of the man of books and the coxcomb, both of whom read characters while they appear, themselves, the subject of the metaphorical dissection of Cobham and Pope. Yet what Pope criticizes here is not so much the metaphorical process of calling character, but a far too literal search for a "Principle of action" as if it was, indeed, a material substance (37). Thus, the material sense of "Principle" identified in Johnson's first sense of the term plays a principal role in this all-too-literal "search" for motive in the human body. In so doing,
Pope does not criticize his own imaginative or fancied materialism in searching for the
"Principle of action." Rather Pope reveals the tragic literalism of the excessive reader of character.
Pope presents the terrifying consideration of a loss of "determination" in order to champion the cause of his "Ruling passion" hypothesis, which appears, however, in its first draft, a "dim" "cause":
Oft in the Passions' wild rotation tost
Our spring of action to ourselves is lost:
Tir'd, not determin'd to the last we yield, And what comes then is master of the field
As the last image of that troubled heap,
When Sense subsides, and Fancy sports in sleep,
(Tho' past the recollection of the thought)
Becomes the stuff of which our dream is wrought:
Something as dim to our internal view,
Is thus, perhaps the cause of most we do (41-50)
Pope presents the possibility that out of fatigue or lethargy, one's "Sense" or "our Sense" will give way to the kind of impoverished "Fancy" or imagination which depends not upon the "determin'd" image, but the "last image of that troubled heap." This, indeed, is a poor use or employment of the imagination or of one's "internal view" (49). Hence, the
"cause of most we do" appears, in this person's imagination, "dim" and unaccompanied by human determination, reason, or will (49-50). This phenomenon, notably, is rather different from Pope's discussion of the "death day as moment of truth,"45 in the close of the poem, as Pope's array of vicious characters actively cling to their material possessions and to their delusions in their final hours. Here, the individual's fatigue and lack of "determination" make the "cause" dim, and this lack of determination itself derives from a search for a literal, material "cause" as opposed to an imagined substance
(43, 50).
To acknowledge that "Something as dim to our internal view" is the "cause of
most we do" is a rather disconcerting way of introducing the ruling passion (49-50). This
might, indeed, lead one to wonder if Pope discredits the idea or offers it out of his own
45 See also Christopher Fox, '"Gone as Soon as Found:' Pope's Epistle to Cobham and the Death-Day as Moment of Truth," SEL 20 (1980) 443 in 431-48. 50 fatigue or resignation. Yet Pope illustrates and hence condemns the kind of lethargy, the
"dim" imagination and the loss of determination which arise in response to the attempt to account for the "Principle" of action in man. Alluding to Shakespeare's lines on the
"stuff "dreams are made on," Pope suggests the uncanny and disheartening possibility of one's actions being controlled by a "dim" fancy in a time of lethargy and resignation.
Yet this collapse of spirit is also a call to arms, particularly, a call to personal determination and to one's awareness of a new, albeit chiefly imagined "Principle of action," the "Ruling Passion" (37, 174). Even though Shakespeare considers life, in his description of dreams, an "insubstantial pageant," when "faded," Shakespeare's lines on life as dream function as a carpe diem. Likewise, Locke's notion, "Where all is but dream, reasoning and arguments are of no use, truth and knowledge nothing," 7 can hardly be discounted. Pope is not about to consider life an "insubstantial pageant faded" or all "but dream." He is not willing to let the "internal view" be kept out of the realm of determination, consciousness, and good sense (49). The "master of the field," for Pope will not be the "last image" of a "troubled heap" but a virtue which one must consistently imagine and cultivate (45).
If Pope clings to the notion that there is indeed some kernel, some hidden motive or passion endowed in man by nature or God that is "thus, perhaps the cause of most we do," he does so by championing self-consciousness and control over lethargy and resignation (50). This is a call to action, though not a call for over-exertion. If "Pope's intent [...] is to chasten the reader's scepticism [...] and to transform it into real and
Shakespeare, Tempest IV.i. 154-8. Locke IV. ii. 14. 51 rigorous humility" here, as Sitter argues, he does so with terror. Yet the "real and rigorous humility" generated by his initial survey does not lead him to excuse himself or his audience from employing the imagination to identify the ruling passion, from associating that passion with moral excellence, or from acting upon that perceived virtue.
The Fancied Virtues of High Life (87-100)
The word "retrospect" constitutes a desire to look backward and thus, to arrest oneself, at least momentarily, from one's present concerns. And, with a "retrospective eye," Pope breaks from his exemplification of reading character in excess by considering the difficulties associated with reading man in "the gross" (51). Referring to figures of
"high Life" and comparing their behaviour to the impact of the sun upon the "Gem" and
"Flow'r," Pope illustrates the ways in which people imagine virtue where it does not necessarily exist (87-100). Having criticized the resignation of the reader of character in excess, Pope suggests that what appears to be resignation on the part of the observers of high life and on the part of the figures of high life themselves is actually a willing and malevolent pursuit of selfish and ill-natured fancies or visions. Still, Pope presents the example of a wayward fancy to espouse the employment of the imagination in the pursuit of a virtuous life.
With his "Gem and Flow'r" passage, a favourite of Samuel Johnson,49 Pope emphasizes the importance of conceiving of one's ruling passion as a virtuous impulse
and of pursuing moral excellence (93). This lesson takes place, again, through negative
example. Pope criticizes those who attribute strength or virtue to appearance and title:
'Tis from high Life high Characters are drawn;
48 Sitter 442. 49 "The Gem and Flower will not easily be equalled." Samuel Johnson, "Pope," The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets. Ed Roger H. Lonsdale. (London: Oxford UP, 2006) 77. A Saint in Crape is twice a Saint in Lawn;
A Judge is just, a Chanc'lor juster still;
A Gownman, learn'd; a Bishop, what you will;
Wise, if a Minister; but, if a King,
More wise, more learn'd, more just, more ev'rything.
Court-virtues bear, like Gems, the highest rate,
Born where Heav'n's influence scarce can penetrate:
In life's low vale, the soil the virtues like,
They please as Beauties, here as Wonders strike.
Tho' the same Sun with all-diffusive rays
Blush in the Rose, and in the Diamond blaze,
We prize the stronger effort of his pow'r
And justly set the Gem above the Flow'r (87-100).
The first half of the passage deals with the magnification of character based upon appearance and social rank which, as Fox suggests, "evokes the favourite theme of
Fielding and Swift - the conflation of greatness with goodness - and translates this trope into social and political terms" (87-92).50 Pope condemns the poor imaginations of social
and political leaders and of those who sustain them. For example, reprising Jaques' "All the World's a Stage" speech in As You Like It, and, as such, suggesting the artifice or
stage-play of public figures, Pope condemns the estimation of someone's moral character
or virtue based upon an assessment of the quality of that person's outerwear or title.
When one considers the martyrdom of the saints depicted in countless works of art, the
finer clothes of the Saint appreciated by the observer as evidence of the Saint's
50 Fox, "Pope, Perhaps, and Sextus" 42. 53 superiority makes for a strident criticism of that observer's imagination. Here, Pope criticizes the imagination of virtue where such virtue does not necessarily exist.
As Pope sustains his criticism of the imagination of virtue where it does not necessarily exist, he employs the "argument of admixture" theory to condemn the wayward imagination of both the observers and the observed. The Bishop, apparently more learned than the Gownman becomes "what you will" (90). He is, himself, bendable, all too easily bribed, and, simultaneously, all too easily the figure of one's own "will."
Thus, one might imagine what one likes about his character. And the king appears even more bendable; Pope replaces Jaques' vision of man's corpse at the end of his life on stage, "sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything,"51 with the image of the royal, who lives to be "more everything" to the observer (92). The figures of high life appear promiscuous, available to all, and, in this light, akin to the characters of women in the next poem, who are "soft."52 The "high" exist almost entirely in the imagination of the observer and are nothing of themselves, "sans everything" except what the observer imagines.
Still, Pope reveals that both these observers and the figures of "high Life" are apt to follow their own selfish fancies, and therefore act more wilfully and malevolently than one might presume (87). The observer's approval of the Judge over the Chancellor
suggests corruption not only in the government but in the people who support it. And,
with his "what you will" Pope condemns government corruption, particularly Walpole's
government of the 1730's under which he composed the first version of the poem. As
Noggle suggests "the wisdom definitive of a 'minister,' and the learning and justice of a
51 Shakespeare, As You Like It. Il.vii. 139-66. 52 "Lady" 3-4. 54 king, seem so sufficiently falsified by Walpole and George II as not to require explicit mentioning." Pope reveals, of the figures of high life, not so much a lack of imagination or will, but a desire to fulfill one's own selfish and vile fancies by making oneself appear malleable. And Pope is equally interested in condemning the observer's bending of these figures in his or her imagination as a willing and selfish perversion.
Thus, Pope begins to suggest that the resignation such as that experienced by his personae in the opening of the poem does not result in but results from a perverted and potentially vicious imagination.
The second half of the passage, the "Gem and Flow'r" conceit likewise emphasizes the improper employment of imagination, again, the imagination of virtue in the place of vice (93-100). In so doing, Pope considers both the potential vices of those at court and of those who hold the court in high esteem. Pope questions the value of
"Court-virtues" by characterizing these "virtues" as "Gems" created by the "influence" of
"Heav'n" as the legitimacy of this theory of generation was coming into question (93,
94). As George Rousseau argues, the notion that minerals, metals, and gems grow in the earth by the influence of sun's heat or from petrific seeds or other processes, though passing into the realm of a "vulgar error" due to the findings of Agricola and others, was still widely accepted in Pope's time.54 Particularly in light of Pope's literary and scientific interests and his maintenance of a garden and grotto at Twickenham, it is certain that he understood this theory and its literary and philosophical contexts. And it is plausible, too, that Pope was cognizant if not of the theory's passage into fallaciousness
(which, like anything's passing into extinction, would be hard to pinpoint) then of its
53Noggle 163. 54 Rousseau 256n39. Bateson calls this a "vulgar error" in ESP 21n93. See also Frank Dawson Adams, The Birth and Development of the Geological Sciences (New York: Dover, 1954). 55 potential fallaciousness. Although one need not acknowledge the passing of this theory into "vulgar error," the "scarcity" of "Heav'n's influence" in the generation of "Court- virtues" appears, thus, even more ironic, as it emphasizes the evaporation of the truth of the theory (93-4). Pope employs this fallacious conceit to signal the lack of heavenly influence and thus, the lack of essential virtue of his figures of high life, including the king, suggesting that virtue is imagined where it does not or might not exist. The lack of influence signals, as well, the perversion of the divine right of the monarchy.
Pope depends on "the Diamond," the most solid and razor-sharp of minerals, and a potentially prismatic one, to sustain his criticism of the perverted fancy of high life
(98). Describing "Court-virtues" as "Gems," Pope condemns the employment of imagination to endow objects with spiritual significance, or, too much spiritual significance, both on behalf of those at court and of those observers everywhere who uphold this false economy as truth (93). As Helen Deutsch observes, Pope interrogates
"the origins of material value, value which is substituted for the supposed immateriality of virtue."55 Pope suggests not virtue at court, of course, but, for the most part, vice.
With the contrast between the "low vale" and "Court,"56 and with his further contrast between the "Gem" and the "Flow'r" (93-5, 100), Pope presents a contrast between
country and city, between the retirement of virtue and the viciousness of the court - the
court being, nonetheless, more "low" and more dark than the country, or, indeed, the
mine.57 Thus, Pope emphasizes the dissociation of the wearer of the gem (or even of the
rose) from the heaven that gave it life, the labourer who drew it from the earth, and even
Helen Deutsch, Resemblance and Disgrace (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1996) 104. Mack reads Pope's lines in reference to Virgil's "Ofortunatos nimium" in The Garden and the City 82-6. See also Fox 43. 56 from the artist who set it in place or proportion. Such dissociation suggests an imagination which is not rooted in the real or in truth.
Moreover, as with the distinctions he makes between written wisdom and spoken opinion in the poem's opening, Pope presents false distinctions between the "Gem" and
"Flow'r" to emphasize the failure of imagination common to the figures of high life and to those who support them (100). Pope's notion that the "virtues" in one character "please as Beauties" and "here as Wonders strike" (96), as Fox notes, is drawn from Sextus: "the same things seem at one time to be amazing or precious and at another time nothing of the sort." Pope reveals, again, an estimation of the character of others based upon personal preference. And he suggests the potentially fickle nature of the court and its upholders. While the Sun," here, the natural force which gives both the "Flow'r" and
"Gem" their beauty, appears "just" in its own distribution of "Blush" and "blaze" to these objects, Pope has already shown that the sense of "justice" in this verse paragraph is none of the sort (97-100). The "blazing" of the gem suggests, indeed, its beauty, its power to reflect and refract light (98). And, the "blaze" appears a "just" value in comparison to the
"Blush" of the rose (100). Yet the rose is likely to blaze too, to be red or orange as well as pink. Pope, the keeper of grotto and garden, presents this comparison to signify the lack
of justice in an economy which places more value in its precious stones than in its
cultivated beauties.
This darkness, however, serves a purpose. With his comparison of the diamond
and the rose, as with the passage in its entire, Pope presents a rather Christ-like concern5
for making one's virtuous actions plain. Both before and after his discussion of the gem
Fox 42. Matt. 5.14-16. 57 and flower, Pope presents his concern for and inability to find or identify plain virtues
(particularly from the place of darkness or blindness he associates with his "dim" reader) so as to promote a view of virtue in plain sight.60 And with his negative example of gem and flower, Pope suggests, nonetheless, that virtues might, indeed be granted by heaven or borne in man, as principle in the previous example. Virtue might exist in the individual, a rarity, perhaps, that is the "gift of Heav'n."61 And, with the "Rose," which has a more obvious or more verifiable relation to "Heav'n," Pope suggests, at least in theory, that the gift of virtue might be less rare than we might presume, and likewise, that one might more easily, or with heaven's guidance, cultivate it or help it grow (98, 94).
Still, Pope fears that virtues, and indeed, some which might be more universal, more flower than gem, more blush than blaze, or more the unpolished than the polished gem, will go overlooked because they do not stand out. Thus, while Pope sees the "will" in the seemingly resigned, he stresses the importance of having a firm will allied with a virtuous imagination (90). Pope suggests that becoming conscious of one's virtue, and indeed, in making it apparent (getting one's veritable light out from underneath the bushel) is imperative.
Wharton, the Deadly Sinners, and Cobham
Of course, Pope reserves his consideration of such virtue for his portrait of
Cobham in the poem's closing lines. He chooses to illustrate his ruling passion theory by considering not a virtuous but a vicious example, Wharton. Yet, particularly in consideration of his references to nature and to natural phenomena, it becomes clear that
Pope presents such vice to emphasize the necessity of employing the imagination to
60 "Cobham" 71-74, 110-12, 122-9. 61 "Burlington" 43. 58 identify and to cultivate virtue. And, as the poem closes, Pope makes the imagination and cultivation of virtue throughout one's life an even greater necessity by presenting a contrast between the seemingly resigned Wharton and those who vigorously cling to their selfish fancies in their final hours. This contrast reveals the selfish and ill-natured fancy of both types. And thus, Pope confirms the need for and provides an example of a better model in his addressee, Cobham.
As Pope presents his ruling passion theory, he raises concerns about the difficulty of identifying motive which remain eerily similar to the observation of that "dim" cause at the poem's opening:
Know, God and Nature only are the same:
In Man, the judgment shoots at flying game,
A bird of passage! gone as soon as found,
Now in the Moon perhaps, now under ground. (154-7)
Borrowing from Warburton, Howard Weinbrot argues that Pope presents "Providence" or, rather, a "God" in the poem who "is incessantly turning the evils arising from the follies and vices of men to general good."62 However, while "God and Nature," respectively,63 remain forever unchanging, human understanding of God or nature remains imperfect (154). Thus, Pope's criticism of man's faulty "judgment" of character appears stinging (155). One's knowledge of character is "gone as soon as found" (156).64
And Pope's references to the "ground" and the "moon," which recall the relationship between "Court-virtues" and "Heav'n" suggest humankind's dissociation from and
62 The reference to "Providence" is Warburton's [Pope, Works (1751) (Ed. Warburton) III, 203] (qtd. in Weinbrot 193). The reference to "God" is Weinbrot's, as he reconsiders Warburton's observation as it applies to ESP as a whole, Weinbrot 198. 63 Pope does not, however, equate God and nature in the manner of Spinoza. 64 Fox notes the "aptness" of this phrase, "Gone as Soon as Found" 444. 59 incomprehension of both "God" and "Nature" (157, 93-4, 154). Thus, Helen Deutsch suggests that "as the poem progresses, nature (and with it human nature), emerges not as a legible essence rather but as the rhetorical source of metaphors for making sense of the indeterminacy of social relations."65 True, "Men" whose "Humours turn with Climes," are not likely candidates for making sound judgments, nor is the "Turn of the clime" necessarily comprehensible (166). Still, Pope espouses the employment of the imagination in pursing connections between humankind and God or humankind and nature. In so doing, he suggests that one might consider the ruling passion a quality endowed by God. Thus, one might associate that passion with excellence as opposed to error.
While Pope continues to refer to nature to emphasize the human failure to employ the imagination in cultivating virtue, the point of this emphasis is to teach his readers to succeed in so doing. Preliminary to his introduction of the ruling passion and his illustration of Wharton's "Lust of Praise" (174-207), Pope recalls the poem's opening representation of the optics to present the divided self or the division between self and others:
Judge we by Nature? Habit can efface,
Int'rest o'ercome, or Policy take place:
By Actions? those Uncertainty divides:
By Passions? these Dissimulation hides:
Opinions? they still take a wider range:
Find, if you can, in what you cannot change. (168-73)
Deutsch 104. 60
Pope categorically dismantles those aspects he saw "striving" within man to produce
"opinion" (21-2). In so doing, he appears as if is at a loss to divine character at all. But in opposition to all of the "Uncertainty" and "Dissimulation" he finds in "Nature" and in
"Passion," he presents, nonetheless, a hope that one might find, in humankind, something substantial, "what you cannot change" (168-71). This might, then, suggest that the search for a ruling passion is a hopeless or tragically literal or material search. However, the confidence of Pope's assertion, even if only a tentative or ironic confidence, surpasses the resignation of the poem's opening strides. Pope insists upon "Find[ing]" something more substantial with which to reclaim not only nature and passion, but action and opinion, too
(173).
Thus, while his introduction of the "ruling passion" is sardonic, Pope presents a more confident or determined quest to employ the imagination to identify that cause:
Search then the Ruling Passion: There, alone,
The Wild are constant, and the Cunning known:
The Fool consistent, and the False sincere;
Priests, Princes, Women, no dissemblers here.
This clue once found, unravels all the rest,
The prospect clears, and Wharton stands confest.
Wharton, the scorn and wonder of our days,
Whose ruling Passion was the Lust of Praise; (174-81)
Pope suggests that the "Ruling Passion" appears the "clue" to unravelling what appears to
be a knot, "clearing" away all inconsistencies (174, 178-9). In making the "Wild"
"constant," and the "False sincere," and by revealing a lack of "dissembling" among 61
Priests, Princes, and Women, Pope simply and effectively damns vice (175-7). This comes close to the swift and seemingly haphazard calling of character performed by the men of "Books" and "coxcombs" which Cobham condemns (1-8). However, as James
Noggle observes, "what skepticism concretely grants Pope, in short, is the assurance that he is avoiding simplistic assessment of others' motives and characters, especially historical figures."66 In "clearing" the "prospect" (179), though this becomes quite similar to the destruction of the avenues and woods in the following epistles, 7 Pope lays claim to a central passion or characteristic which he quickly identifies in Wharton, and which appears to make Pope's history of the man consistent, though "The Fool lies hid in inconsistencies" (129).
Revealing, perhaps, a bit of optimism about the prospect of identifying and cultivating virtue within, Pope refers to "nature" and "art" to consider Wharton's ruling passion (192). Pope suggests, with Wharton, that the ruling passion might, potentially, be an endowed virtue which is perverted by improper imagination; he presents Wharton's
"Lust of Praise" as a perversion of gifts endowed at birth (181). Indeed, while Pope appears to have dispensed with "virtues," in Wharton's regard (95), he reveals that
Wharton has been given "each gift of nature and of art" (192). Wharton is blessed with everything except the "honest heart" required to utilize these gifts of "nature" properly
(192-3). This is not to say that Wharton, like Chloe in the "Epistle to a Lady," lacks or has not been given a "heart."68 Rather, it suggests that Wharton lacks the "honesty"
necessary to cultivate his gifts (193). Thus, it is due to his dishonesty, to his perversion of
Noggle 162. "Lady" 37-40; "Bathurst" 209-10; "Burlington" 79-98. "Lady" 160. 62 what "nature and art" have given him that Wharton appears to embody the kind of will- less, resigned character Pope detests.
Pope illustrates Wharton's ruling passion, his "Lust of Praise" by identifying
Wharton's dependence upon the opinion of others, and thus, by considering the involvement of his fancy in anticipating, re-assessing, or perhaps fabricating those opinions (181). With this in mind, Sitter and Noggle argue that Wharton is not able to recognize his own ruling passion. Wharton's "Lust of Praise," seemingly bars him from making his own self-assessment or from becoming, ironically, truly self-conscious.
He cannot make distinctions, failing, as Sitter suggests, "to understand that 'same spirit' which he adores and whores" (188-9).70 And Wharton's blindness to his ruling passion relates to the "Gem and Flow'r" conceit (87-100). His passion leads him to be entirely malleable, grown "all to all" as the rulers and the ruled in the previous passage (194, 90).
One wonders, however, if Pope makes Wharton blind to his own "Lust of Praise" as these critics have suggested, or if Pope makes Wharton blind to his potential virtue.
In any case, Wharton has a will, and he wilfully employs his fancy in cultivating his own fear. Like the kings and rulers of high life, Wharton has selfish desires. He appears not only "Too rash for Thought," but, like a gem or precious metal drawn from underneath the ground, and praised for its rarity, "too refin'd" for "Action" (201). He is unable to act at all, though he appears, nonetheless, to both "rebel" and to "break thro' ev'ry rule" (203, 206). "Break[ing] thro'" suggests not only a stumbling or running
"thro"' as if he did not, indeed, stop to think, but also a conscious desire to "break" the
law (206). Wharton's life is lived chiefly for others, though, in this light, he lives for
Sitter 445; Noggle 165. Sitter 445. 63 himself, "all for fear the Knaves should call him Fool" (208). Wharton has a perverted fancy or imagination, and Pope suggests that Wharton chooses to employ his imagination in cultivating his own "fear" (208).
Perhaps in light of his dismay in Wharton's misdirected fancy, Pope's conclusion of the portrait appears tentative. Nonetheless, Pope remains confident of his ability to identify the ruling passion:
Nature well known, no prodigies remain,
Comets are regular, and Wharton plain.
Yet in this search, the wisest may mistake
If second qualities for first they take. (208-11)
Indeed, Pope appears to dismantle his theory almost as immediately as he introduces it, embodying the "gone as soon as found" theme of the poem in his notion of "second qualities" mistaken for "first," a reference to Locke's distinction between primary and secondary qualities (210-11).71 The ruling passion is not a literal, material substance or thing which resides inside of the body or mind, a primary quality. Still, Pope suggests that a motive or passion, though one must employ one's imagination in order to identify it, exists within the self. Moreover, Pope suggests that one must consider this passion as
a potentially virtuous impulse, as the light of God or as a benevolent or loving motive, if
one is to live well.
Certainly, Pope's references to nature in these regards do not offer quick or easy
comfort in regard to Wharton's "plain" character (209). Of these lines Stumpf argued that
71 Over the course of the Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Locke holds that qualities produce ideas in us. Both primary and secondary qualities are quantitative. However, primary qualities (solidity, extension, figure, mobility) are spatiotemporal, while secondary qualities (colour, sound, taste) are not. The ideas produced by primary qualities are objective, while those produced by secondary qualities are not. 64
if Pope seeks to convince us that his theory imposes the same comfortable
'regularity' upon the mind of Wharton as Newton's theories did upon the cosmos,
he fails badly. He has, in fact, painted the picture of chaotic vacillation all too
well, and the reader is still likely to regard Wharton as rather a 'prodigy' than
'plain' and to hope that he himself will be spared the comforts of such
'regularity.'7
One might complement Stumpf's argument by suggesting that the imposition of
"regularity" of course, on the "cosmos," likely imposed as much discomfort or at least as much "wonder," "awe" and "anxiety" in its revelation as it did comfort, even in the most intelligent minds. Yet Pope is aware of the parity between the wonder aroused by his revelation of Wharton's "plain" character and the wonder aroused by the "plain-ness" of the universal order or the "Comets" revealed by Newton and Halley (209).73 Indeed,
Pope appropriates, with his theory of the "Ruling Passion," the imaginative or visionary powers of Newton and Halley in attempting to understand what one cannot discern with the naked eye and in devising a theory or model of what, nonetheless, remains in motion.
And, like Newton, he considers the hidden order in nature, as in man, in relation to the hidden influence or ordering power of God. Thus, Stumpf makes an important point about Pope's desire for the reader to be "spared" such "regularity." Pope wants to spare his readers a literal or materialistic interpretation of such theory.
"Stumpf 341. 73 Newton, De Svstemate Mundi (1687), [London: Tonson, Osborn, and Longman, 1728] Microfiche: Landmarks of Science (New York: Readex Microprint Corporation, 1985) [later, in Principial: Halley, Synopsis of the Astronomy of Comets. [Trans, and Printed in London for John Senex, 1705] Microfilm Reel 2647: 02.1705 (Woodbridge: Research Publications, 1986); See ESP 31n209. 65
Pope prefaces his final sequence of character sketches with a discussion of the
"strength" of the ruling passion in death so as to espouse the employment of the imagination in pursuing a virtuous life:
In this one Passion man can strength enjoy,
As Fits give vigour, just when they destroy.
Time, that on all things lays his lenient hand,
Yet tames not this; it sticks to our last sand.
Consistent in our follies and our sins,
Here honest Nature ends as she begins. (222-7)
Pope recalls his opening anxieties about the mind's becoming resigned to the "last image of a troubled heap" as he emphasizes the "strength" of the ruling passion in death, its ability to overcome man's body and "destroy" him (45, 222-3). Here, at least, Pope refers to the "vigour" of the body in its destruction as opposed to the resignation of will he revealed as the tragic characteristic of the excessive reader of character (223). Yet with the apparent contrast or divide, Pope begins to confirm that the will of man, as with
Wharton, is never wholly resigned. Nor, thus, can the imagination be out of man's control. Rather, Pope suggests that the imagination needs to be put to right use. If
"Nature" ends as it "begins," then what is strong in death is endowed at birth (227). Thus,
Pope uses simile to compare the "strength" of the "Passion" to the "vigour" of "Fits" in the destruction of life rather than confirming that death is the most appropriate time in which to identify the ruling passion (222-3).
Still, before observing this vigour at its best, in the consistent, virtuous
"Cobham," Pope considers this vigour at its worst, in the perverted imaginations of the 66 vicious people who lay dying. Pope emphasizes the energy of his vicious characters in death so as to condemn their selfish and ill-natured employment of imagination. Each figure is in the process of denying their death and, as such, the course of nature. Roy
Erikson and Christopher Fox both identify the character sketches towards the close of the poem as a form of procession akin to the processions of the seven deadly sins in Dante or
Spenser. With his figures of vice, Pope does not deliberately identify the ruling passion, as he did with Wharton. Rather, Pope makes the divination of the ruling passions of his vicious figures affective, thus insisting that his readers employ their imagination and judgment. Still, the pattern of the "deadly sins" provides a relatively straightforward guide to the passions or, rather, to the vices, of each so that the reader might effectively identify the vice so vigorously pursued by the sinner. As Christopher Fox argues,
To Seneca, say, or to early Montaigne, the death-day should ideally confirm a
man's rational ability to control his passions; to Pope, the death-day instead
confirms the passion which has largely controlled the man.
To this extent, the vicious figures at the poem's close are no different from Cobham.
Pope considers the vigour with which his vicious characters cling to and cultivate their passions and delusions. Whether or not they are aware of their ruling passions, they are able, nonetheless, to stick to their "last sand" as if they were to defy death (225). And
Pope reveals a spiritual investment in the material at a time when the material should matter the least. Helluo insists on eating (234-7). The crone collects her "taper's end[s]" as she herself "puff[s]" her last breath (239, 241). Narcissa won't wear wool, insisting,
74 Roy T. Erikson, '"The Last Image of that Troubled Heap': From Chaos to Coherence in Pope's Epistle to Cobham," Studia Neophilologica 52 (1980) 302-3 in 299-310; Fox "Gone as Soon as Found," 447-8; for a treatment of the procession in Pope's Dunciad in relation to Pope's interest in visionary poetics, see John Sitter, The Poetry of Pope's Dunciad (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1971). 75 Fox, "Gone as Soon as Found" 443. 67 like the "Saint in Crape," on "Chintz, and Brussels lace," those foreign commodities so often associated with the luxurious and perverted fancies of women in social and literary criticism engaged in championing the virtues British manufactures (242-7). And old
Euclio insists on keeping his "Manor" rather than accounting for his family's succession
77 to their title (256-61). Thus, Pope reveals the "mad spirituality" which people invest in material objects, tastes, and social relations. This "vigour" proves preferable to the resignation of the over-reader of character, and, perhaps, as well, to the people-pleasing malleability of Wharton (223). However, in the comparison, Pope confirms that Wharton, too, is employed as wilfully in searching for "Praise," as the sinners, here, seek to establish, sustain, or indulge in their vicious fantasies (181). And thus, Pope suggests that resignation, too, requires conscious determination and even, conscious or active malevolence. Still, there is something about their fanciful behaviour which is, nonetheless, dynamic, and which Pope attempts to re-direct to better ends.
In his sketch of "Cobham," Pope presents the kind of person who employs his imagination in order to live a virtuous life. While Pope opens the poem by adjusting the opinion of this friend, Cobham appears the positive foil to Pope's deadly sins and to all of the figures of vice in the poem. Cobham's ruling passion, his love of country, might be easily divined from his final, '"Oh, save my Country, Heav'n'" (265). Still, Pope makes
Cobham's love of country complex by presenting Cobham in comparison with some of
the vices who preceded him, most notably, Euclio, the landowner who will not give up his "Manor" (256-61). Thus, at least initially, Cobham's love of country appears not
76 See Paula Backscheider, Daniel Defoe: His Life (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1989); Alan Hunt, Governance of the Consuming Passions (New York: St. Martin's, 1996); Beverly Lemire, Fashion's Favourite (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1991); Chloe Wigston Smith, '"Calico Madams': Servants, Consumption and the Calico Crisis," Eighteenth-Century Life 31.2 (Spring 2007) 29-55. 77 Edwards 62-3. 68 entirely "selfless."78 Perhaps "Country," after all, covers too much (265). One wonders if this is a desire for the Whig Opposition to see changes in the country or if this is a more personal regard for the proper maintenance of the gardens at Stowe. And one can be wrong about the methods required to save one's country. But Pope, as a complement to his friend, means to be broad. And "Country" suggests a love of the nation, the land, its natural elements, and the people in it, as well as a love of both its "Nature" and its
"Heav'n" or God (265).
Thus, Pope suggests that not all men are "madly spiritual" about the wrong things, that not all ruling passions are vices, and that not all men's imaginations are bent so as to become fascinated with the material and the literal. While Pope presents the notion that one might "feel your ruling passion strong in death," the point of the poem is to suggest that Cobham, like Thomson's lovers at the close of "Spring," 79 "feels" this ruling passion throughout his life, "such in those moments as in all the past" (263, 264). This is not, of course, a fool's consistency, or inconsistency, for that matter, but flexibility. Thus, Pope does not throw doubt upon the validity of the ruling passion because of its generality.
Rather, Pope suggests that one employ the imagination in order to identify and to cultivate the ruling passion, to associate that passion with moral excellence, and to pursue
such virtue throughout one's life. Cobham's "railing" at the "man" of "Books" and the
"coxcomb" in this regard reads, at last, as a temporary inflexibility (2, 5). And Pope reads
Cobham's ruling passion as proof of Cobham's moral "fibre" or "Principle" (16, 37).
The same "Heav'n" which endows "Cobham" with his passion is the "Heav'n" to which
he prays not only for his own redemption but for that of his nation (265). Thus, Pope
78 Fox 448. Thomson sees his lovers' "Spirits fly" once they "sink in social Sleep" in "Spring" 1173-6. 69 sees Cobham's strong will allied with his imagination. In "The Epistle to Cobham," Pope shows that the "right use" of the imagination is the employment of that imagination in attempting to identify one's ruling passion, in associating that passion with moral excellence, and in engaging oneself in the service of the good. II. THE NATURE OF THE "EPISTLE TO A LADY": POPE'S LESSONS IN FELLOW FEELING
In the "Epistle to a Lady" Pope continues the project of the "Epistle to Cobham," advocating the employment of the imagination in the attempt to identify the ruling passion and in the attempt to cultivate one's own virtues. Here, he collapses the already- slim divide between the softness of Wharton and the vigour of the deadly sins by suggesting that the actions of both soft and strong vices are conscious, wilful responses to a passion which they have perverted, oppressed, fixed, or ignored. Yet Pope's primary aim is to teach the ways in which the virtuous might employ their imaginations so as to benefit others. In "Epistle to a Lady," Pope identifies the need for and teaches the '"right use' of the imagination"1 in the cultivation of sympathy and generosity for others.
Johnson defined sympathy as "fellow feeling, mutual sensibility" and "the quality of being affected by another."2 In this poem, Pope refers to external nature and alludes to his employment of similar references in the "Epistle to Cobham" to teach that "fellow feeling" requires an imaginative attempt to understand both the needs of others and one's own needs, not so as to please the self, solely, but, to the extent that it is possible, to please or gratify others for their sake.
Life without Sympathy: Nature in the Portraits of "Most Women" (1-156)
As in the "Epistle to Cobham," Pope teaches largely through negative examples in the "Epistle to a Lady." In the first half of the poem (1-156), Pope refers to natural phenomena and to his employment of similar references in "The Epistle to Cobham" to acknowledge "Most Women's" propensity for sympathy while exposing their perversion
1 David Fairer, Pope's Imagination 111. 2 "Sympathy," DEL.
70 71 of such sympathy (2). Although scholars in the field have paid attention to Pope's treatment of nature in the poem,3 including Pope's reprise of images from the previous epistle, this pursuit has hardly been exhaustive. Even Thomas Edwards, who considers nature in the Epistles to Several Persons, pauses only briefly to consider this piece, as he sees the epistle "threatening to disrupt the Augustan 'pattern of meaning' that organizes the Moral Essays as a whole."4 One might simply acknowledge a distinction as opposed to a "threat" by considering this poem a fine composition set among three finer ones. In any case, the poem's difference from the others epistles in the sequence has been confirmed by those interested in Pope's attitudes towards women5 and by those interested in Pope's influences and style.6 Still, and as many of these scholars continue to suggest, there is much to be said for Pope's consistent grouping of the "Epistle to a Lady" among the other epistles, for his considerable allusion to the natural phenomena of the "Epistle to Cobham," and for his introduction of new and novel references to the natural world.
Thus, I will attend to Pope's references to the external nature at some length as I consider
Pope's comparison of nature and human nature in support of his lesson in fellow feeling.
At the opening of the poem, Pope considers the public nature of women's lives both abroad and at home as a means of criticizing their wayward fancies. In public as in private, most women employ their imaginations in order to please themselves or to please others only in so far as this increases their own pleasure. This selfishness, however, leads to an anxiety not unlike the anxiety of the excessive reader of character at the opening of
3 Edwards, This Dark Estate; Fairer, Pope's Imagination; Leranbaum, Alexander Pope's 'Opus Magnum'; Ellen Pollak, The Poetics of Sexual Myth; Wallace Jackson, Vision and Re-Vision in Alexander Pope (Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1983). 4 Edwards 63, 73-7. 5 Pollak. 6 Weinbrot identifies Pope's desire for "Lady" "to be compared and contrasted with the very different satires of Juvenal, Boileau, and Edward Young" in addition to the Horatian style he identifies there and in the other three epistles, Weinbrot, Alexander Pope and the Traditions of Formal Verse Satire 189. 72 the "Epistle to Cobham." Women live their lives as if always in the public eye, developing, in the process, and as Pope later makes clear, a revulsion to domestic life and to solitude. Ironically, as Pope emphasizes towards the close of the section, his selfish women nonetheless present a fascination or "rage" (100) for fanciful approximations of solitude and death which signify their lack of faith in God, or their failure to remark upon the constancy of either "Nature" or "God."7
The Early Portraits: The Public Lives of "Most Women"
At the outset of the "Epistle to a Lady" (1-40), Pope refers to external nature and to the "Epistle to Cobham" to emphasize the relationship between women's "softness" or lack of "character" and the lack of a distinction between their public and private lives (2-
3). In the poem's opening lines, Pope addresses one of the concerns of the "Epistle to
Cobham," the importance of having a firm will as opposed to a malleable one. However, he does so to associate women's softness with their selfish and ill-natured fancies. Pope confirms the "truth" of what had merely been the passing remark of his "Lady," presumably his dear friend, Martha Blount:8
NOTHING so true as what you once let fall,
'Most Women have no Characters at all'.
Matter too soft a lasting mark to bear,
And best distinguish'd by black, brown, or fair. (1-4)
Pope criticizes the larger portion of the female population for its lack of character, though he suggests that this is not due to a lack of will or power. That "Most Women" are "too
soft" (2-3) links them to the public figures in "Cobham." Their "softness" compares to
7 "Cobham" 154. 8ESP45-6nl. 73 the easily-bent will of public figures and their supporters in the "high Life" portion of the
"Gem and Flow'r" passage. And, with the comparison, Pope implies that women, too, have failed to identify or imagine their own ruling passions as virtues.
As Geoffrey Keogh claims, Pope's affirmation of his lady's passing remark also reveals "Most Women's" similarity to a precious metal, gold, because of that metal's softness.10 Of Pope's references to gold in the collection which make this association viable, particularly of the "Epistle to Bathurst," Ellen Pollak suggests that "Pope's views on the character of luxurious, inactive wealth are for the most part unequivocally negative."11 While Pollak's view of gold's "negative" connotations remains valid, Pope does not suggest, here, that women are inactive. Nor, as many who concern themselves with the politics of gender in the poem suggest, does Pope consider "softness" in relation to "gold" as a means of confirming women's relegation to private, domestic life. Pollak considers Pope's women
as autonomous entities (confined to private life, they have no public function in
society nor do they perform any practical, public service), they are identified with
gold in its primitive, inactive state and are thereby associated with unfruitful,
decadent wealth (domestic treasure) and useless art ('artful to no end,' they are
not only impotently cunning but merely ornamental). They are a sort of filthy
lucre unmediated by industrious or rational enterprise, a storehouse of unrealized
possibility turned in upon itself.12
9 "High Life" passage: "Cobham" 87-92; "Gem and Flow'r" passage: "Cobham" 93-100. 10 Geoffrey Keogh, "Pope's 'Epistle to a Lady' 1-4," The Explicator 31.5 (January 1973) Item 37. See also Pollak 124-5; James Noggle, The Skeptical Sublime 170-1. 11 Pollak 124. 12 Pollak 125. Noggle reads this evaluation as "incomplete," in Noggle 170. 74
Likewise, Noggle's suggestion that women "represent cash value in its physical removal
1 ^ from the cash system" presumes that the role of women in Pope's time and in his poem consists chiefly of "confinement" or "removal" to "private life" in which women have little or no function in society or in public. However, as Tita Chico implies when she reads the bulk of the poem as a "sustained critique of public women's self-display," this separation of spheres requires adjustment.14
In the "Epistle to a Lady," the scope of "Most Women's" lives is less far-ranging, perhaps, than men's, but it is not relegated to a separate, private life. And Pope's reference to the softness of women in the first four lines of the poem speaks not to their relegation to a private life distinct from a public life but to a life without substantial distinctions between spheres. Hence, Chico's description of "public women's self- display" is apt. Most of Pope's women are "public women," performing and conscious of being observed when in private and public in their so-called intimacies.
If, indeed, Pope considers women's "softness" in relation to gold at the opening of the poem, then Pope confirms their similarity to the figures of "high Life" in
"Cobham"15 by drawing attention to women's potential to invest spiritual value in material objects drawn from the bowels of the earth (3). As with gems, value might be placed in gold in association with the influence of heaven or nature which set it in the earth or made it grow, with the labour of the hands that drew it from the earth, or with the artist who set them or moulded them, with some imagination, into shape. Yet Pope has only described gems or gold, at this point in the sequence, to reveal peoples' failed or erroneous attributions of value to artists, labourers, nature, and God. And, if Pope refers l3Nogglel71. 14 Tita Chico, Designing Women (Lewisburg: Bucknell UP, 2005) 129. 15 "Cobham" 93-100. 75 to "softness" in relation to "gold," here, he does so to criticize his public women's vigorous pursuit of selfish and ill-natured fancies (3).
In the opening series of portraits which follow, Pope considers the relationship between women and the natural world to criticize the public lives led by most women and to suggest that this public life results from a failure of imagination, in particular, a failure of sympathy. With his "Pictures" of "one Nymph's" "Folly," Pope observes women's artificial relationship to external nature to suggest that women perform at home as if they were in public (5, 16). And, in so doing, he begins to condemn women's wayward fancies:
How many Pictures of one Nymph we view,
All how unlike each other, all how true!
Arcadia's Countess, here, in ermin'd pride,
Is there, Pastora by a fountain side.
Here Fannia, leering on her own good man,
And there, a naked Leda with a Swan.
Let the fair one beautifully cry,
In Magdalen's loose hair and lifted eye,
Or drest in smiles of sweet Cecilia shine,
With simp'ring Angels, Palms, and Harps divine;
Whether the Charmer sinner it, or saint it,
If Folly grows romantic, I must paint it. (5-16)
While the pictures appear "unlike," Pope insists that they are all "true" in their rendering
of "Folly grown romantic," which, as Bateson suggests, reads as "Folly" grown 76
"extravagant" and thus, in the extreme (6,16). Additionally, as Rousseau argues, Pope often employs the term "romantic" to describe outdoor scenery and nature's violence therein.17
Pope's portraits, dubbed from portraits Pope had seen in the great houses of his friends and patrons, emphasize women's dissociation from the natural world.18 Pope points to the artificiality of "one Nymph" in each of her poses, and to the artificiality of her surroundings to emphasize women's self-consciousness (5). For example, "Arcadia's countess" wears ermines to represent her "Pride" and social status (7). Yet, while Pope suggests that each picture is "unlike" the next, Pastora and her setting, of course, do not contrast the "ermin'd pride" of "Arcadia" (6-8). A "fountain" intervenes, emphasizing that Pastora is not involved in rural sport or labour (8). Particularly if one is conscious of
Pope's "quotation" of Van der Vaart's painting of the Countess of Pembroke seated with a lamb, then Pope's fountain-side Pastora, like the fur-clad Arcadia before her, lacks a relationship to the living, natural world. Likewise, external nature seems to make an appearance towards the close of Pope's gallery-tour, but only as a piece of scenery. The
"Palms" beside the "Harps" and "Simpering Angels" coordinate with "Cecilia's" all-too- conscious "smiles" (13-14).
With these pictures and their emphasis upon women's distinction from the natural world, Pope calls attention to the desire of most women to present themselves with artifice (or, like Wharton, to have others represent them thus) in the home. Portraits of
16ESP48nl6. 17 Rousseau and Nicolson, "This Long Disease. My Life" 211-12. 18 Jean Hagstrum confirms this connection, noting that "the first picture of the countess reflects not only the fashionable Arcadianism of the period but the love of painting rich stuffs and materials characteristic of two centuries of portraiture, from Raphael d'Urbino to Raphael Mengs. The portraits of the same lady as Pastora may actually 'quote' a contemporary painting of Margaret Sawyer, the Countess of Pembroke, by John Van der Vaart, in which the lady fondles a fleecy lamb," in Jean Hagstrum, The Sister Arts (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1958) 237. The Van Der Vaart (c. 1687) is reproduced in ESP opposite p. 48. 77
Pope's contemporaries drawn in the style of the great masters were often displayed in great manor houses. Also, the men and women who sat for the portraits, even those with a landscape in the background, most often posed in the home or in an artist's studio.
Thus, the "fountain-side" of Pastora's picture calls attention to the likely composition and presentation of such a picture indoors (8). Likewise, Cecilia's "Palms" call attention to the domestic (as opposed to the exotic or foreign) locale in which such copies were made
(14). And Pope presents the series of portraits to his addressee as if to guide her on a tour of a picture gallery.
As Noggle remarks in regard to Pope's association of women and gold, Pope's
"Pictures" emphasize the "fetishization of women" by others or, as I would add, by themselves. Women, according to Noggle,
gain their sublime status, not by being 'indestructible and immutable' but by their
mutability, which requires men to withdraw, protect, and frame them fetishitically
as special objects.19
By seeing women as "special objects," Pope reveals that the home's interior, itself, has become a studio or gallery in which women appear as copies of literary, mythical, and sainted characters, or copies of copies, leering upon their husbands (who, in the case of
Fannia, for instance, might either share a place beside them in the frame or remain the object of their glances outside of the frame),20 their guests, and themselves (9-10). Thus,
Pope suggests the kind of scrutiny of self and other which he exemplifies and condemns in the opening of the "Epistle to Cobham," the separation of the self from the self from moment to moment. In this case, Pope uses this distinction of selves both to criticize
19 Noggle 171. 20 Bateson suggests that the Fannia portrait is based on a "confused recollection by Pope of two fine double portraits of a husband and wife," ESP 47-8n7-13. 78 women's failure to identify their own virtues and to begin to suggest their failure to identify the virtues and desires of others. In their "Folly," Pope suggests, women's fancy has "grown romantic," too (16).
Pope refers to external nature and to the phenomena of the previous epistle in his portraits of Rufa and Sappho to reveal the similarity of their public and private lives and thus, to criticize their wayward fancies:
Rufa, whose eye quick-glancing o'er the Park,
Attracts each light gay meteor of a Spark,
Agrees as ill with Rufa studying Locke,
As Sappho's diamonds with her dirty smock,
Or Sappho at her toilet's greasy task,
With Sappho fragrant at an evening Mask:
So morning Insects that in muck begun,
Shine, buzz, and fly-blow in the setting-sun. (21-8)
Particularly when one has read the "Epistle to Cobham," the distinction between Rufa's private and public pursuits reveals a dim internal view. Rufa, both with her "eye" "quick- glancing" over her "sparks" (which compares to the excessive reader's "snatching," not
"taking," "knowledge of "men")21 and with her "studying Locke," threatens to study both men and books not "too much" but too swiftly (21-3). Indeed, Rufa the "glittering public idol and the studious private woman,"22 is the same, performing in public as in private, in order to satisfy her lusts. Rufa's "sparks," as "meteors," come and go as quickly through the park (a place of sexual intrigue, such as St. James's Park, London) as Rufa's appetite
"Cobham" 34. Fairer 98. 79 changes (22).23 Pope uses the reference to the "meteor," here, to recall the "regularity" of the "Comets" in the "Epistle to Cobham," and thus, to make Rufa's fickle or changeable appetite for men, her lust, as plain as Wharton's "Lust of Praise."24
Pope also refers to the natural phenomena of the "Epistle to Cobham" to identify the similarity of the public and private personae of Sappho, or Lady Mary Wortley
Montagu,25 and to criticize her perversity. The morning toilets or levees of men and women, which Mr. Spectator had called woman's "great scene of Business," were often well-attended events, particularly for those of social and political power.26 And thus, a
"Mask" proves similar to a "toilet" in terms of a woman's need to perform for an audience and for the likelihood of sexual intrigue or innuendo; though in Sappho's case, neither an audience nor an intrigue seems likely (25-6). Particularly in reference to the
"Epistle to Cobham," the "ill-suited" connection between Sappho's diamonds and her
"dirty smock" proves the same as the connection between Sappho's "fragrance" at the
"evening Mask" and her "greasy" toileting habits (24-6). With Sappho, Pope alludes to the dubious influence of heaven among the public exemplars of the "Epistle to Cobham" to associate the dark and earthly origins of the "Gem" with the filth of the wearer. And, if
97 the "Rose" appeared unnecessarily weaker than the "Gem" in the previous epistle,
Sappho's "fragrance," Pope implies, is most inferior to that of the rose; we must assume the lady stinks (26). Valerie Rumbold notes that the "emphasis on filth and sensuality is
See John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, "A Ramble in St. James's Park," Complete Poems and Plays, Ed. Paddy Lyons (London: Everyman, 1993) 51-55; Pope, "The Second Satire of the First Book of Horace, Sober Advice from Horace," Imitations of Horace. Vol. IV, The Twickenham Edition of the Poems of Alexander Pope. Ed. John Butt (London: Methuen, 1939) 11. 39-44. 24 "Cobham" 209-10, 181. 25 ESP 50n24. 26 Addison, Spectator no. 10. 27 "Cobham" 97-100. 80 part of a well-established male response to women perceived as stepping out of line."
And Sappho "steps out of line" here by failing to make distinctions between home and abroad, between filth and beauty, or between love and lust. It is no wonder that Pope compares her to "insects" rising from the "muck," emphasizing her insubstantial nature and remarking upon her relative distance from heaven at birth (28).
First Glimpses of Perverted Sympathies
While Pope hints at the lack of fellow feeling presented by the women in his early portraits, his chief interest, there, is to emphasize the lack of a distinction between women's public and private lives, or, indeed, to suggest that women have no private life at all. In the remainder of his negative portraits of women, Pope refers to external nature and to the natural phenomena of "The Epistle to Cobham" to reveal women's propensity for sympathy via its perversion.
Pope makes trivia of extreme weather to criticize Silia's selfishness. "Soft" Silia has imagination enough to be able to identify and to begin to address the needs of the
"Frail and the "Weak" (29-30). She befriends only those she considers weak or less virtuous, becoming "the Frail one's advocate" and the "Weak one's friend" (29-30).
"Simplicius" even "asks of her advice" (32). Thus, no matter her motive, Silia's playing
"advocate" for the "Frail" appears, at least potentially, a generous or sympathetic gesture.
However, Pope refers to Silia's shifting state of mind, her "Sudden" "storms," to emphasize that Silia's motives are wrong (33). Silia "storms!" in response to the eruption
of a "Pimple" on her nose:
All eyes may see from what the change arose,
All eyes may see - A Pimple on her nose. (35-6)
28 Valerie Rumbold, Women's Place in Pope's World (New York: Cambridge UP, 1989) 195. 81
Pope criticizes Silia's over-reaction to trivial matters of appearance by considering the
"eyes" focused upon Silia's "nose." Reuben Brower calls Pope's expression, here, one of
"politely exaggerated wonder."29 Still, since Silia's company consists merely of people whom she considers "weak" so that she might appear "nice" in the comparison (30-1), such sudden exaggeration suggests her potential to harm her weak or marginalized friends. In any case, Pope shows that both Silia's "soft[ness]" and "storms" stem from her vanity. And thus, Silia's fear "to offend" becomes another version of Wharton's lust of praise (29).
Pope refers to external nature and to the "Epistle to Cobham" to make Papillia's ability to uphold her marriage vows and, hence, to be a sympathetic partner, as unlikely as her propensity to become a steward of the natural world:
Papillia, wedded to her doating spark,
Sighs for the shades - 'How charming is a Park!'
A Park is purchas'd, but the Fair he sees
All bath'd in tears - 'Oh odious, odious Trees!' (37-40)
Papillia's fantasies of "shade" relate to a desire for privacy, solitude or even death. Most importantly, they convey a desire for a new sexual intrigue. Papillia's spark, now her husband, has lost his charms, and Papillia longs for a "Park" or a "shade" in order to express her desire to return to that life of intrigue, now lost. Fairer argues that "as an
'idea' the park attracts here, but once provided, the all-too-actual trees seem odious in comparison."30 This is true in the sense that different kinds of "Parks" exist, and that
Papillia's fancied "Park" is not the kind which has been or which might be "purchas'd"
Brower, Alexander Pope: The Poetry of Allusion 275. Fairer 99. 82 for her (39). Papillia's "Odious!" recalls Narcissa's exclamation in "Cobham" (40).
There, Narcissa rejected wearing "woollen" on her deathbed in favour of imported
"lace,"31 relating her dissatisfaction with British textiles in favour of foreign ones.
Recalling this high-spirited remark, Pope suggests that Papillia's dissatisfaction, as well, exists in her comparison of one form and another, with the park that is purchased and the park she fancies and cannot own, a public place of intrigue with a fresh supply of sparks.
The park which is literally purchased is most likely not a public park like St. James's, but, more likely, an avenue of trees or a private enclosure where animals are kept and hunted only with a license (and perhaps located on or near the place one resides with one's spouse).32 Thus, Papillia's response to the "trees" reveals the incompatibility of the purchase with her selfish fantasies or lusts (40). And Pope presents Papillia's entrapment in a marriage without love. The failure of this union, for the most part, is not to be blamed on the "spark"-turned-spouse who, either to spite his wife's licentiousness or out of love or pride, makes extravagant purchases for Papillia; it is to be blamed on the bride herself (37).
Papillia's disappointment with the "trees" appears trivial here (40). However, when one considers the felled avenues and woods of the epistles to Bathurst and
Burlington and Pope's consideration of the importance of "trees" in nation-building,33
Papillia's crying out against the woods (as Narcissa's crying out against her British
"woollen" before her) suggests that the wayward imagination is of social, political and economic significance. Pope is not among those staunch critics identified by Fairer who considered social and political problems the result of a wayward female imagination in
31 "Cobham" 242. See also Chapter Two, 67n76. 32 "Park," DEL. 33 See Chapter Three. 83 opposition to male judgment and truth.34 Like Fairer, I do not think that Pope, even if he identified a difference in the ways in which men and women employ their imaginations, would insist upon a polarity between wayward female fancy and virtuous male imagination. Nor would Pope consider such trivia as Papillia's longing for "the shades," her dim internal view, to have a direct or profound impact upon the social and political economy (38). Still, Pope uses this example to consider the ways in which such a lack of sympathy between partners and such selfish and ill-natured imagination might, indeed, affect the nation.
Playing Dead and Raging to Live: More Sympathies Subverted
Ellen Pollak argues that "the very characteristic of unmitigated self-love that unites 'most women' in a narcissistic uniformity also keeps them constantly doubling back on themselves in self-defeat."35 One manifestation of such "doubling back" is the fascination of Pope's public women with shade and darkness. With his portrait of
Narcissa and those that follow, Pope refers to nature and to "Cobham" to identify more abbreviated or perverted sympathies, and he associates this common failure among his subjects with their ghostly appearances and with their rages for approximations of death and dying. In his portraits of Narcissa and Philomede (53-86), Pope recalls or revives the dying, deadly sins in "Cobham"36 to point to women's failure to meet the needs of others, revealing their heartlessness.
Fairer 59 et passim. 35 Pollak 113. 36 Bateson, ironically, refers to these as if they were separate people: "The Narcissa in To Cobham, 247, is Mrs. Oldfield the actress," ESP 53n53-68; "There is another Helluo in To Cobham, 238," ESP 55n79. 84
Narcissa, observed in "Cobham" uttering her "last words,"37 appears, in "Lady," alive and more "odious" than in the previous poem. In her second life, Pope emphasizes
Narcissa's vanity by suggesting that she is not only a "fool to Pleasure" but "a slave to
Fame" (62). Pope presents Narcissa's sad quest for "Pleasure" and "Fame" by acknowledging her lack of sympathy and generosity. She only "made a Widow happy" for "a whim," and she only pays her "Tradesman" in order to "make him stare" (58, 56).
The speaker's own ironic sympathy for Narcissa's "Conscience" and the "sad, good
Christian" she remains "at heart," suggests a lack of "heart," a failure to imagine a virtuous ruling passion, and an inability to act upon that passion consciously or with any
"conscience" (65, 68). Indeed, Pope's references to "hearts" and "heartlessness" over the course of the poem emphasize not only women's failure to identify their own virtues but also, and, more importantly, here, their failure to treat others charitably.
Pope's references to nature in the portrait also confirm Narcissa's inability to imagine and to address the needs of others. Pope notes (rather ironically in consideration of her death-bed scene in the previous poem) that Narcissa can be "born" only when she appears to be in her "Good-nature" which, Pope suggests, is her "scorn" (59-60). And
Pope reminds his audience of Narcissa's malice by referring to her potential child- murder; to "make a wash," she will refrain from "stewing a child" (54). This recalls
Pope's consideration of the ail-too literal search for a ruling principle in the "Epistle to
Cobham," the need to find a literal, material principle in the mind.38 With Narcissa, Pope points to a malicious character whose "dim" internal view is dangerous not only to
"Cobham" 243, in 242-7. Assumably, her "last words" would be "Cobham" 242. However, Pope underscores her vanity by making her regard for her personal appearance continue in "Cobham" 244-7. 38 "Cobham" 39-40. 85 herself, but also to others. Like Silia, she is more likely to harm others than to come to their aid, despite her so-called restraint.
Pope recalls the example of the glutton "Helluo, late Dictator of the Feast" in
"Cobham," to reveal Philomede's lack of fellow feeling (79). Philomede teaches "soft
Passion" and refined "Taste" to "all mankind" (83-4). Despite her instruction, however, she makes her own "hearty meal upon a Dunce" (86). To emphasize Philomede's half- sympathy, Pope compares her actions to "the late deceased Helluo's" fine "Nose" and
"tip of taste" in criticizing the palates of others despite his preference for "plain pudding" at home (80-82). Thus, in the comparison, Pope makes Philomede's "lect'ring" on the
"soft Passions" potentially malicious or vindictive, too (83-4). And, while Philomede's public and private life appear to clash, as does Helluo's, Pope reveals their "hearty" gluttony and lust, respectively, to identify the consistency of their malicious behaviour in private as in public (86). Thus, Philomede's own lessons in fellow feeling prove examples of selfishness and ill-will.
With his portrait of Flavia and with the brief catalogue of anonymous female figures which follows upon his treatment of Simo's Mate (87-114), Pope makes minor but striking references to the natural world and to the "Epistle to Cobham" to emphasize the ways in which women's potentially sympathetic acts become subverted by their fascination with solitude and death. These women prove potentially generous towards others. Flavia "Toasts our wants and wishes" (88) and the woman who "owns her Faults, but never mends," appears "honest, and the best of Friends" (103-4). Yet these characters subvert their sympathies because of their fascinations with death or opiates. Just as
Flavia "toasts" her friends, Pope reveals that her attention has been diverted by a "rage" 86 which grows from the same superstition which informs her seeming generosity (88-100).
Her toast, "while we live, to live" is a generous carpe diem (90). Yet Pope recalls a
"godless regent trembling at a star" in the "Epistle to Cobham,"39 to reveal Flavia's superstition. Flavia asks "not of God, but of her Stars" for such a blessing (89). Thus,
Pope reveals the absence of faith in God where such faith ought to be. And, particularly in light of "Cobham's" regent's "trembling," the toast seems uttered out of fear rather than faith. Therefore, Pope relates Flavia's new rage "for Death," to her "impotence of mind," a failed imagination which cannot see the work of God in the stars or in her own life (91, 93).
Likewise, the woman who "laughs at Hell" proves to be a woman of little faith
(107). She sighs like Papillia in her longing for a park: "Ah, how charming if there's no such place" (108). And her disinterest proves her laughter folly as opposed to courage or indignation in the face of Hell. Like Flavia, the woman who laughs at hell kills "Time and Thought" by taking her "daily Anodyne and nightly Draught" (111-12) Thus, Pope reveals that woman's propensity for sympathy is perverted by emphasizing her strange and unnatural attraction to death and her inability to believe in God, or to believe in the constancy of either God or nature. And he shows that with such a rage for death (the dark outcome of their unfulfilling lust and pursuit of pleasure) the women "die of nothing but a rage to live" (100).
With the final "pejorative character sketch" in this section, the vicious Atossa,40
Pope refers to "Cobham" and to external nature to emphasize that woman's failed sympathy and generosity stems from her own selfishness. Recalling the hydrographical
39 "Cobham" 147-9. 40 Jackson considers Pope's Atossa the most pejorative character sketch of the poem, Jackson 90. 87 description of the reader of character in "Cobham," Pope emphasizes Atossa's fickle nature by describing her disappearing "Thoughts": "No Thought advances but her Eddy
Brain / Whisks it about, and down it goes again" (121-2). As with the easily-lost
"Principle of action" which Pope first considers in relation to the "Quick whirls, and shifting eddies"41 of the mind, Atossa's brain quickly reabsorbs advancing thoughts. And, as with Silia, Pope refers to a "Storm" to emphasize Atossa's lack of sympathy or generosity for others. Her "Gratitude" appears a "Storm" of "her hate" (132). Like her predecessor, though more openly tyrannical (for, as Howard Weinbrot argues, Atossa
"must be superior to all persons and emotions"),42 Atossa wants to make her "inferiors" dependent (136). Pope appears to express sympathy for Atossa when he claims that
"Love, if it makes her yield, must make her hate" (134). However, his apparent sympathy emphasizes the extent of Atossa's "hate." And Pope proves that her hatred not only of other people but of herself results from her self-love. Atossa becomes "Sick of herself thro' very selfishness" (146).
As with his other female figures, Pope associates Atossa's perverted sympathy with an unnatural fascination with death:
Oblige her, and she'll hate you while you live:
But die, and she'll adore you - Then the Bust
And Temple rise - then fall again to dust. (138-40)
Having considered Atossa's propensity for love, Pope suggests that she adores only what
is dead. The Bust and Temple she erects appear to fall or dissolve rather too quickly to
support evidence of feeling in the woman. And Pope matches this dissolving or
41 "Cobham" 37 and 30, respectively. 42 Weinbrot 193. 88 dissolution of monuments with Atossa's own fate or legacy. In life, Atossa already appears to upset a social and economic order, if not a natural one: "Childless with all her
Children, wants an Heir" (148). And, considering her demise, Pope first suggests that
Atossa's "unguarded store" might descend to "Heirs unknown" (149). This "Store"
(perhaps of gems or gold) is most likely to represent her material wealth, as Atossa lacks a "Wealth of Followers" as she dies (145). Yet Atossa has no control over the fate of her money upon her death. The "Store" just as likely "wanders, Heav'n directed, to the Poor"
(150). Thus, Pope sees the potential of God, as Weinbrot suggests, returning things to "at least part" of their rightful order, as he will more determinedly with his "Lady" at the poem's close. Pope insists upon the generosity of God in endowing people with virtue, feeling and with life. Yet, indeed, it is with this indecision between a fate of obscurity and of a return to order that Pope underscores the chaos generated by Atossa's wayward fancy and longs for a virtuous model.
Clouds, Chameleons, and Calypso: The Poet and His Audience
Pope makes his criticism of perverted sympathy in the first half of the poem more strident by questioning the virtue of his own imagination. In and amidst these portraits of women of perverted sympathy, Pope considers the potential of his own fancy and those of his addressee and wider audience to become, as Fairer suggests, "engaged with the surface, not the heart."44 As Felicity Nussbaum argues, "The Epistle to a Lady" acknowledges "with a rare psychological acumen the way in which we are often most attracted to that which we most despise or fear."45 And Pope refers to the natural world
43 Weinbrot sees "God's benevolent reshaping of at least part of her will," Weinbrot 193. See also Bateson 59nl29-32;Rumboldl93. 44 Fairer 107. 45 Felicity Nussbaum, The Brink of All We Hate (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1984) 157. 89 and to the natural phenomena of the "Epistle to Cobham" to consider the potential vice or vanity of his rendering of the vicious characters in the first half of "The Epistle to a
Lady." His references to his own role as painter or artist (17-20, 151-6), and his comparison of "variegated tulips" and "Ladies" like "Calypso" (41-52) underscore his own attraction and the attraction of the reader to vice or defect. In so doing, Pope stresses the need to describe a model of virtuous sympathy.
After considering the portraits of "one Nymph," Pope emphasizes his own attraction to vice when he remarks to his "Lady," "If Folly grows romantic, I must paint it!" (16). In both the preface and the conclusion of the gallery of portraits that follows,
Pope considers this impulsion more seriously. Pope refers to external nature and to the
"Epistle to Cobham" to emphasize his own skills in reproducing women's folly:
Come then, the colours and ground prepare!
Dip in the Rainbow, trick her off in Air,
Chuse a firm Cloud, before it fall, and in it
Catch, ere she change, the Cynthia of this minute. (17-20)
Pictures like these, dear Madam, to design,
Asks no firm hand, and no unerring line
Some wand'ring touches, some reflected light,
Some flying spark alone can hit 'em right:
For how should equal Colours do the knack?
Chameleons who can paint in white and black? (151-156) These passages, as Miriam Leranbaum and Ellen Pollack have both suggested, refer to
Pope's opening discussion of the inscrutability of the "Principle of action" in man in the
"Epistle to Cobham," particularly the verse paragraph in which Pope refers to hydrography and dissection to argue that "half our knowledge we must snatch, not take."47 Thus, it becomes critical to acknowledge that Pope's initial image in "Cobham" is an exemplification of what it means to read excessively, to read as if one were able to find an actual, material fixed principle in man rather than imagining one, and, as a result, to resign one's imagination to a "dim" internal view or to be ruled by the "last image of a troubled heap."48
By recalling this failure, Pope emphasizes that he does not attempt to capture an individual woman's essential character but, in comparing and contrasting women, he might say something about the sex in general, revealing their propensity for and perversion of sympathy. Thus, it is with mock-resignation that Pope wonders over his ability either to "dip in the Rainbow" and take from it something as substantial as a lick of paint or a singular colour, or to catch the "Cynthia of this minute" in her momentary appearance as a "firm cloud," which is neither firm in the minute in which it appears before him nor as it dissolves (18-20). Pope is not so much concerned with his own ability to capture an entire character as he "trickfs] her off in air," as he is interested in capturing aspects of her lack of firmness, her chameleon-like borrowing of colour from another, or in rendering her dissolution (18).
Still, Pope refers to the optics of the previous poem to emphasize the potential viciousness of his own task of capturing women. The very dazzling array of "Manners"
46 Leranbaum 72; Pollak 122-3. 47 "Cobham" 29-34. 48 "Cobham" 45. 91 and "Opinions" produced by mixing individual manners, passions, reason and fancy in the last poem49 suggest that Pope's apparent ease in "dip[ping] in the Rainbow" or catching "some reflected light," might, thus, appear as a kind of artistic resignation (18,
153). Yet, as Fairer argues, and perhaps more particularly in light of Pope's previous discussion of difficulty in gauging "Opinion" in the "Epistle to Cobham," Pope's art is more detailed than he openly admits: "It is certainly a secondary level of artistic activity, concerned with surface brilliance and highlighted details, but Pope knows that this very elusiveness demands a kind of genius."50 And Pope refers to painting in order to suggest that, like poets previous to him, he, too, means to instruct "painters" and hence, his audience.51 Still, while Pope stresses more the resignation of his ladies than himself, he encourages his readers to wonder about the virtue of his own project. He encourages a consideration of the relative merits of capturing or painting vice so as to promote virtue.
With his comparison of women and tulips (41-52), Pope calls attention not only to his own attraction but also to the observer's fascination or attraction to vice or defect, and thus, to the wayward imagination of "Most Women" (2). Discussing the similarity of
"Ladies" to "variegated tulips," Pope discusses "our" fascination with the "spots" or
"changes" in the flower:
Ladies, like variegated Tulips, show,
'Tis to their changes half their charms we owe;
Their happy Spots the nice admirer take,
Fine by defect, and delicately weak. (41-4)
4y "Cobham" 19-22, 23-8, 168-73. 50 Fairer 91. 51 Hagstrum 238. 92
Here, Pope points to his own consciousness and makes his audience conscious of the human propensity to consider something "Fine by defect" and "delicate" because of its
"weak[ness]" (44) With the tulip, which, as Fairer reminds us, along with the cloud and moon had been for some time entrenched in criticism of women's imagination (as opposed to man's judgment),52 variegation or defect might prove a way of accounting for beauty. Yet Pope proves that accounting for "Ladies" as one accounts for either genetic variation or the cultivated "Spots" in "tulips" is to misconstrue defects for positive attributes and weaknesses for delicacy (41, 43). Noggle warns that "such appreciation depends not on overcoming a moral disapproval of women as objects but on cultivating it." And Pope is wary of such risk. As with the "half of our knowledge" which the excessive reader of "character" "snatched," in "Cobham,"54 Pope attributes "half of the
"charms" of women to their "Changes" to warn that the observer's attraction to inconstancy or defect might lead to their own resignation of imagination to the "last" of the "troubled heap" (42).55
With Calypso (45-52), Pope reveals his own attraction to vice or defect as dangerous while implicitly offering a rationale for why he does so: to identify the need for virtuous sympathy. The reference to variegation or "Spots" in the tulip also recalls
Pope's attention to the varieties of "leaf and "grain," in "Cobham."56 In "Cobham,"
Pope suggests that to appreciate variation is to imagine a norm. Pope's picture of
Calypso, however, operates not from a norm related to beauty or truth but from something the speaker himself cannot identify, and which he can only associate with
52 Fairer 95. 53 Noggle 173. 34 "Cobham" 34. 55 "Cobham" 45. 56 "Cobham" 15-16. 93
"hate" (52). The ability of "Calypso" to "alarm" "each heart" proves a manner of
"creating passion" in us (45, 51). However, the speaker, like the resigned figure of
"Cobham," cannot aptly evaluate the manner in which his subject varies from or comes to embody this norm. Calypso comes close to, but does not fully embody "all we hate" (52).
She merely "touch[es] the brink" (52). And thus, Pope suggests that she does not have anything substantial, a heart or passion of her own, perhaps, which would make the attraction worthwhile (45).
Considering the quality of his own imagination by remarking upon the subject's,
Pope relates Calypso's attraction and alarming of the heart not only to her physical appearance (she was "just not ugly"), but also to her "Strange graces" and "flights" (49-
50). And, in so doing, Pope suggests that the imagination must be employed for a more substantial purpose.57 Calypso's failure of imagination relates to her own lack of sympathy for others. Pope presents Calypso's perversion of sympathy in her resemblance to that animal he later identifies as the "Chameleon" (156). Calypso's "Tongue" and
"Eyes" figure prominently in her description, while her ears are not mentioned, though she appears a "Mimic" (47, 48). Chameleons, too, have large eyes, long tongues, and lack ears. Thus, as a chameleon, Calypso would find it difficult to comprehend the needs of others. To awe without virtue and to charm without beauty is perhaps Pope's triumph, here, in rendering the "alarm" of his "heart" and the heartlessness of his vicious women
(46). Yet in becoming aware of this attraction to the "Strange" and to that which borders upon "hate," Pope reveals his desire to identify and to be attracted to a figure whose virtues are identifiable (49, 52). And he aims to find a woman who touches the "hearts"
See also Fairer 111. 94 of others not so as to alarm them but to soothe them (44). Indeed, Pope implies that without such a model, his own project would be a malicious one.
The Necessary Triumph of Martha Blount
In the second half of the "Epistle to a Lady" (157-290), Pope refers to the natural phenomena of the first half of the poem and, again, to "The Epistle to Cobham" to consolidate his criticism of women's failed sympathies, to identify the cause of this failure, and to offer his "Lady" as a model of the '"right use' of imagination." The portrait of Cloe provides one final, scathing example of women's perverted sympathy
(157-80), while Pope's discussion of women's "ruling passions" confirms and mourns the
"public" nature of women's lives (181-248). With this newer theory of the ruling passion,
Pope suggests that women's inadequacies result not from their "ruling passions" per se but from the oppression of those passions. In so doing, Pope extends some hope for the existence of a better woman. And, at last, impressing upon his audience the need for the triumph of virtuous imagination, Pope writes the "Fame" of his better model, Martha
Blount, a woman possessed of fellow feeling and good sense (249-92).
Cloe's Defect
Pope confirms the need for a virtuous example by presenting one final, scathing portrait of a woman of perverted sympathy, Cloe. As Felicity Nussbaum observes, both
Atossa and Cloe "are potentially more destructive to a stable society because they may deceptively appear to be conciliators."58 And Pope emphasizes Cloe's destructive powers by separating her portrait from the previous array of female figures in two ways. First, he places Cloe's portrait (157-80) between a discussion of his own artistry (151-6) and his
Nussbaum 152. 95 treatment of the difficulties in rendering a "Queen" which follow (181 -98ff.). Second,
Pope reveals that Cloe's apparent virtues have almost fooled his addressee. While it is not his first attempt to temper his lady's response to one of his portraits, Pope's consideration of his lady's objection (or potential objection) to his argument reveals Cloe's powers of deception:
'Yet Cloe sure was form'd without a spot -'
Nature in her then err'd not, but forgot.
'With ev'ry pleasing, ev'ry prudent part,
'Say, what can Cloe want?' - she wants a Heart. (157-60)
Pope corrects the lady's assessment of Cloe's pleasing and prudent nature by pointing to
Cloe's defect, her lack of a "Heart." And, in so doing, he suggests the potential victimization of his addressee or audience when a defect passes as a virtue.
Pope's references to "Nature" and to the "Heart" emphasize that Cloe lacks sympathy and generosity (158, 160). By referring to the "Heart," Pope recalls his discussion of Calypso (160). Pope considered Calypso's "alarm" of the "heart" a warning-sign of her faults, and he considered her attractions unhealthy ones (45). Cloe proves more dangerous, as emphasized by Pope's consideration of nature. When Pope reveals that "Nature" has not "erred" but "forgotten" to endow Cloe with a "Heart," he suggests deficiency on the part of nature (158). Yet, in daring to blame "Nature," Pope underscores, instead, Cloe's own perversity. She lacks feeling. And Pope expands his
59 This situation is somewhat debatable, as many of the portraits of women were added in editions of the 1740's, and several of the portraits were arranged and rearranged by Pope and Warburton. I follow Bateson's editorial practice, as described in ESP 38-43. See also Julian Ferraro, "From Text to Work: The Presentation and Re-presentation of 'Epistles to Several Persons,'" Proceedings of the British Academy. Vol. 91, Ed. Howard Erskine-Hill (New York: Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 1988) 111-34. As such arrangement applies to the character sketches at the close of the previous poem, see Roy T. Erikson, '"The Last Image of that Troubled Heap': From Chaos to Coherence in Pope's Epistle to Cobham," Studia Neophilologica 52 (1980) 299-310. 96 revelation of Cloe's vicious nature by acknowledging Cloe's capacity to be "very reasonable" (164). Even if she might prove a poor reasoner, Cloe's consideration of
"Virtue" as "too painful an endeavour" suggests that she willingly resigns herself to a dim internal view (163-4).
Pope refers to "Nature" and to "Heav'n" to emphasize that Cloe has a selfish and ill-natured imagination which subverts charity and generosity at every turn (158, 171).
Nussbaum suggests that "even apathetic Cloe is incapable of generosity and love."
True, she marks the "figures on an Indian chest" when she might, instead, be helping the
"Friend in deep despair" (168-9). Here, as Fairer argues, her "fancifulness manifests itself in her wrong priorities; it is a function of her superficiality."61 Yet Pope considers this fanciful superficiality part of Cloe's conscious and blatant disregard of others. He recognizes that Cloe might "Forget" a "Favour or a debt," but she does not "Cancel it"
(171-2). And Pope compounds his criticism of Cloe's unwillingness to cancel such debt with the ironic exclamation, "Forbid it Heav'n" (171). Again, in Pope's world of a generous God, 2 such forbidding on the part of heaven, as forgetting on the part of nature, is absurd. No matter if the exclamation is attributed to Pope or to Cloe, who would then take "Heav'n" if not God in vain in her unwillingness to cancel a debt, Pope emphasizes
Cloe's lack of fellow feeling. In this light, Cloe's initial "forgetting," too, appears as unlikely as nature's "forgetting" to endow her with that physical, material, organ, the heart (172, 158).
Pope confirms Cloe's vicious disregard of others by considering her treatment of death. While, unlike an earless and long-tongued chameleon, Chloe might have an "ear"
60 Nussbaum 151. 61 Fairer 106. 62 Weinbrot 198. See also Chapter Three. 97 in which to pour one's secrets, and while she may not engage in "slander," she neither shares her own secrets nor does she "care" if "a thousand are undone" (173-6). And, if
Cloe does not care for the death of one's reputation or character, she remains indifferent, as well, to whether "you're alive or dead" (177). She needs the footman to "put" the news of someone's death "into her head" in order to garner any knowledge (178). Thus, while
Pope appears, with Cloe, to present some relief or contrast to the fascination with death, the "sighting] for the shades" of so many of her counterparts (38), Cloe's disinterest proves equally perverse. Cloe's apparent isolation from society or from the news of everyday life makes her no less a "public woman" than her counterparts in the first half of the poem, even or especially as this coldness proves a willing disregard for the lives of others, a means of selfishly cultivating her own perverted fancies. With Cloe, then, Pope identifies the need for a salve, the need for an example of a virtuous imagination in his lady, Martha Blount.
Queens for Life
Stopping first, however, to identify the ruling passions of most women, Pope presents a rather scathing portrait of human oppression, while, nonetheless, making room for his virtuous example. While, as I have shown, many passages from "The Epistle to a
Lady" refer to "Cobham's" lines on "high Life" and the "Gem and Flow'r," Pope's most obvious and most extensive reprise of these lines enables him to substantiate the public nature of women's private lives, and from this, to consider the perversion and oppression of the ruling passion, a virtue endowed at birth. As Miriam Leranbaum emphasizes,64
Chico 129. Leranbaum 71-5. 98
Pope reprises the "high Life" passage of the "Epistle to Cobham" to consider the difficulty of delineating the true nature of a subject drawn from high or public life:
The same for ever! and describ'd by all
With Truth and Goodness, as with Crown and Ball:
Poets heap Virtues, Painters Gems at will,
And show their zeal, and hide their want of skill.
'Tis well— but Artists! who can paint or write,
To draw the Naked is your true delight.
That Robe of Quality so struts and swells,
None see what Parts of Nature it conceals.
Th'exactest traits of Body or of Mind,
We owe to models of an humble kind.
If QUEENSBERRY to strip there's no compelling,
'Tis from a Handmaid we must take a Helen,
From Peer or Bishop 'tis no easy thing,
To draw the man who loves his God, or king;
Alas! I copy (or my draught would fail)
From honest Mah'met, or plain Parson Hale. (185-98)
Pointing to a difference between artists, in general, and "Artists! who can paint or write,"
Pope suggests that the pleasure of the true artist lies not in heaping "Virtues" like "Gems"
(187, 185). To do so would be to render virtue where it does not exist, and thus, to ally one's imagination with falsehood as opposed to truth. However, to paint the true nature of the "Robe of Quality" is impossible, as such nature lies concealed (189). Pope could not 99 ask the Duchess of Queensberry65 to "strip" for a portrait of Helen, and thus, we can only find "true nature" in a "Handmaid" (193-4). If, both for men and women, the robes of office or one's status make it hard to discern one's true nature, then the artist must seek a
"humble" model (192). In so doing, Pope, as with his figures of "high Life" in the previous epistle, points to the potential faults if not of his Queensberry, then of his
Mah'met and Hale.66 He does not discount the possibility of "Virtue" among Queens, here, nor did he do so in the previous epistle. However, for Pope, the project of comprehending the character or virtue of even a "Handmaid" in a group he later classifies as a "whole Sex of Queens" appears even more difficult than in comprehending the characters or virtues of men (194, 219).
If the "Queen" passage relates to the "high Life" portion of "Cobham," then the
"Virtues in the shade" passage of the "Epistle to a Lady" (199-206) relates to Pope's description of the origins of the gem and flower in "Cobham."67 Pope suggests that while
Men might be "shown," at least "sometimes," in "Public," "Women" are only "seen" in
"Private life":
But grant, in Public Men sometimes are shown,
A Woman's seen in Private life alone:
Our bolder Talents in full light display'd;
Your Virtues open fairest in the shade.
Bred to disguise, in Public 'tis you hide;
There, none distinguish 'twixt your Shame or Pride,
65 Catherine Hyde, Duchess of Queensberry (1700-77) was a reputed beauty, ESP 63-4nl93. 66 In some of the editions of the late 1740's, Pope notes that "Mah'met" is "the son of a Turkish Bassa," ESP 64nl98. Hales was Pope's friend and neighbour Dr. Stephen Hales. See Chapter One 47n44. 67 "Cobham" 87-92 and 93-100, respectively. 100
Weakness or Delicacy; all so nice,
That each may seem a Virtue, or a Vice. (199-206)
Particularly with his emphasis upon the public lives of women in the poem thus far, and in relation to the first half of the passage, Pope suggests that rendering woman's virtue or true nature is relatively impossible. As Pollak suggests, Pope makes it virtually impossible to find a "good woman" in the epistle.68 Here, women who are "Bred to disguise," spend their time "hid[ing]" in "Public" and are not to be found in private at any time (203). If women's virtues, thus, are shade-virtues, then Pope's public women have no chance of cultivating theirs.
Yet Pope's public women, of course, have been associated with the "shade" throughout the poem (202). Thus, in his discussion of shade-virtues, here, Pope, as with his example of Papillia, marks a difference between the fancied "shades" sought after by most women, and the actual or real "shade" of a private life which he espouses and which he wants men and women to search out. In the "Epistle to Cobham," Pope uses a false division of "Gem" and "Flow'r," of a burning beauty and a beauty less bright, respectively, to reveal potential corruption among figures of "high Life" and of those who support them. Yet Pope suggests, with that false distinction, the possibility of more virtue than expected, more potential "Roses" than "Gems" in the world. Here, by suggesting that most women's virtue opens "fairest in the shade," Pope considers the rarity and dearness of the shade-flower, considering not only the precious quality of women's virtues but also that of the shade which produces or aids in the cultivation of such rarity.
And, again, by comparing these virtues with flowers as opposed to gems or gold, Pope
Pollak sees this only as a "variant reading," relating the notion of rarity, here, to her overall suggestion that "the exceptional woman is positively valued because she cannot be named," Pollak 117. 101 suggests that cultivation of virtue is still possible. Such rarity is not so entirely distant or difficult to come by.
Thus, while Pope's discussion of the ruling passion functions as a criticism of
"Most Women," Pope emphasizes women's potential to be virtuous by identifying the oppression or perversion of "Most Women's" passions (3, 202), which, he emphasizes, are rooted in "Love":
In Men, we various Ruling passions find,
In Women, two almost divide the kind;
Those, only fix'd, they first or last obey,
The Love of Pleasure, and the Love of Sway.
That, Nature gives; and when the lesson taught,
Is but to please, can Pleasure seem a fault?
Experience, this; by Man's Oppression curst,
They seek the second not to lose the first. (207-14)
By suggesting that two ruling passions "almost" divide the sex, Pope suggests that it is at least possible that some women might have more various passions (208). And, as he limits women to two passions, he suggests that these are potential virtues. "Nature," after all, gives to woman at least her "Love of Pleasure," if not, also her "Love of Sway" (210-
11), for, as Wallace Jackson suggests, the "Love of Sway" comes from "Experience."69
Still, both passions stem from a "Love" that contrasts Wharton's "Lust of Praise" (210).
And Pope sees even Wharton endowed with "each gift of nature and art" before he
70 reveals that Wharton wants "an honest heart."
Jackson 94. "Cobham" 192-3. 102
By considering women's ruling passions in association with "Love," Pope suggests that it is a human failure not to associate one's passion with the consistency of either God or nature, and not to treat others, likewise, as if they were "divine as oneself."71 One finds the passions "only fix'd" in women (209). And Pope suggests that it is social conditioning and "oppression" which perverts or, indeed, "fixes" such "Love"
(211-14). Both men and women appear at fault for this perversion. Pope first considers the way in which being taught "but to please" transforms a pursuit of "Pleasure" into something vicious (212). And female education is as much the province of women as that of men, if not more so. Pope then observes the ways in which "Man's oppression," too, forces women to divide their attention between two closely related, but nonetheless distinctive pursuits (213). Indeed, it is perhaps less the pursuit of one or both passions which proves troublesome, here, and more the matter that "Pleasure" and "Sway" cannot be pursued simultaneously or in a more flexible manner (210). For, as Pope confirms with his example of Blount's "Fancy ever new," the cultivation of virtue requires a great deal of flexibility (279). Here, Pope considers the ways in which men and women pervert the "Love" endowed in humankind at birth. However, in so doing, Pope implies that
virtue might be endowed expansively among women and men, and that it might be possible to imagine and cultivate that virtue in the self and in relation to others.
Pope's further appraisal and condemnation of women's public lives, in this light,
appears almost cruel or unnecessary. Yet Pope pauses to criticize his "Ghosts of Beauty"
to emphasize that the oppression and perversion of the ruling passion results in the lack
of a very necessary divide between private and public life (241). Considering men's
71 Here, I borrow from Walt Whitman's "Reconciliation": "For mine enemy is dead, A man as divine as myself is dead." Leaves of Grass and Other Writings. Ed. Michael Moon (New York: Norton, 2002) 270. ability to retreat into private life from their daily Bus ness,' Pope considers the tragic
"Fate of a whole Sex of Queens!" who wish to be "Queens for life" (215-19). Pope's public women, in their youth, search for "foreign glory" and "foreign joy" with "no thought of Peace or Happiness at home" (220-4). Likewise, Pope's "Ghosts of Beauty glide," appearing "Worn out in public" yet preferring to "haunt the places where their
Honour dy'd" (241, 229, 242). Indeed, it is no wonder that Empson found Pope almost
"hag-ridden by these poor creatures," seeing that they "excite in him feelings [...] of waste, of unavoidable futility, which no bullying of object can satisfy."72
Yet Pope creates this public spectacle to suggest that this problem of imagination might, at last, be of considerable importance to the nation. Comparing these "Queens" to political leaders, Pope suggests that both "Queens" and the "Great" find it difficult to understand that "Wisdom's Triumph is well-tim'd Retreat" (225). Retreat has, indeed, become a "hard science," both for the "Fair" and for the "Great," who lack both wisdom and a consistently virtuous imagination (226). Pope implies that women's wayward fancies might indeed affect the nation, and perhaps on an even grander scale than the tyranny of a single "Great" man. If women, as Pope suggests, have not the "retreat" available to men, then they are much in need of such a place. And thus, Pope proposes the need for the triumph not only of "Wisdom" but also of the virtuous imagination, a need which he fulfills in his portrait of Martha Blount (225).
Imagination's Triumph: Pope's Lady, Martha Blount
While, as Helen Deutsch argues, "in 'To a Lady' the impossibility of analogies between 'Nature' and 'Human Nature' is made most obvious," so too is the possibility of
72 William Empson, Seven Types of Ambiguity (London: Chatto and Windus, 1947) 150-1 (qtd. in Edwards 74; Jackson 94). their analogy. At the close of the poem, Pope re-visits and reprises his previous references to external nature to offer an example of a woman of sympathy, his "Lady,"
Martha Blount (249-92). As Jean Hagstrum suggests, Pope's "Lady" is ideal not because she is a paragon, but because she is human.74 She has suffered from the smallpox, and she has played both the lottery and "Codille" (266-7).75 Pope already saved her from
"tipping the wink" when such a "wink" was unnecessary (33). And he likewise questions her attraction to Cloe (157-60). Still, his "Lady" proves the foil to the previous vices in the poem.
Pope lauds a woman possessed of an imagination fine enough not only to be able to establish her own virtue, but also to be able to identify and to address the needs of others. Contrary to Ellen Pollak, who regards Blount's appearance as a rendering of woman
more fundamentally as the vehicle for a conception of the female as lack. Having
no meaning in herself, woman here is best a part and counterpart of man, whom
she at the same time mirrors and completes,76
Pope renders a woman of sympathy whose imagination is virtuous enough for Pope to recognize her "Sense" (292). Blount does not "mirror and complete" man. Nor does
Pope, in his portrait of domestic happiness, attempt, like other "upwardly mobile and politically ambitious British men" who, as Linda Colley claims, wanted to "legitimize their claims to active citizenship, without taking women along with them," to relegate
Deutsch, Resemblance and Disgrace 106. Jean Hagstrum, Sex and Sensibility (Chicago: The University of Chicago, 1980) 142. Bateson confirms Blount's experiences in ESP 69n266-7. Pollak 109. 105
77
Blount to the home. Rather, Pope lauds Blount's domestic sympathies and her "Fancy" and "Sense" to suggest the necessity of such "Fancy" and "Sense" for both of the sexes and in both the private and public spheres (279, 292). Pope sees the need, here, to return to women what is rightfully theirs, a private life. In so doing, he does not deny them their public lives. Rather, he claims for them the power to employ their imaginations in pursuit of truth and goodness. And, if the poet returns to a primarily male or masculine scene for the remainder of the sequence, it is not, thus, to render women the mere object or means of "masculine fulfillment,"78 but to render "Fancy" and "Sense" in his "Lady" both a pre requisite and a model for the exemplars of nation-making who follow (279, 292).
Pope's presentation of the lady's virtue is canny. He first refers to nature to present his desire for his "Lady" to possess the sympathy and generosity he then goes on to show she already possesses:
Ah Friend! to dazzle let the Vain design,
To raise the Thought and touch the Heart, be thine!
That Charm shall grow, while what fatigues the Ring
Flaunts and goes down, an unregarded thing.
So when the Sun's broad beam has tir'd the sight,
All mild ascends the Moon's more sober light,
Serene in Virgin Modesty she shines,
And unobserv'd the glaring Orb declines. (249-56)
In desiring his friend to exhibit the ability to "touch the Heart" and "raise the Thought,"
Pope longs for the kind of sympathy and inspiration so many of the lady's predecessors
Linda Colley, Britons (New Haven: Yale UP, 1992) 254. Pollak 127. 106 in the poem appeared capable of but which they subverted in their selfishness (250). By identifying her desire to "touch the Heart," Pope suggests not only the virtue of his lady, or indeed, the existence of her "heart" where "hearts" were scarce, but also her desire to imagine or assess the needs of others (250). Likewise, as Wallace Jackson suggests, "to raise is the action of benevolence within the world."79 And Pope's desire for his lady to
"raise" the "Thoughts" of others renders her a paragon, in staunch contrast to Atossa, whose brain consumed her thoughts, or to "oppressive" "Man" (250, 213). Here, Pope's references to nature sustain the divide between the lady's ascendant virtues and most women's failed sympathies. The "dazzling" of the "Vain" recalls the association between
"Gems" and the figures of "high Life" in the "Epistle Cobham" as well as the diamond of
Sappho and the gems heaped upon the Queen by lesser artists (249). And, just as the
"Tir'd" reader in the "Epistle to Cobham" resigns himself to a "dim" view of human motive, Pope predicts the "fatigue" of this "ring" (251).
OA
Pope presents a new, though not untarnished metaphor of the "Moon" to foresee his lady's rise to a more lasting "Fame" (254, 281). While the "glaring Orb" of vanity
"goes down," Pope identifies his "Lady" with the "Moon" in order to suggest her ascendancy (254-6). This is not to suggest that she will never age or die. As Edwards suggests, "Death is inevitable, but some kinds of aging and dying are more admirable than others."81 Rather, Pope proves that the lack of heavenly regard for most women will be trumped by Blount's hearty association with heaven. As Jackson emphasizes, the lady's association with the moon does not signify her separation from the "sun." Rather,
"Martha's Moon" is a "light owing nothing to pride's orb; instead, like that moon with 79 Jackson 96. 80 Pope refers to the moon to criticize human "judgement" in "Cobham" 154-7. 81 Edwards 75-6. 107 which she is linked, she moves within her own subordinate sphere deriving her light
(power) from the Godhead itself." Pope's preference for the "Moon" as opposed to the sun, presents a desire to renew or to revive women's association with light and with heaven as a substantial and direct connection, as opposed to an artificial attribution which disintegrates as soon as it is remarked upon.
When Pope returns to daylight to laud the sympathies of his lady, he sloughs off the negative associations of the natural phenomena he depicts over the course of the poem:
Oh! blest with Temper, whose unclouded ray
Can make to morrow chearful as to day;
She, who can love a Sister's charms, or hear
Sighs for a Daughter with unwounded ear;
She, who ne'er answers till a Husband cools,
Or, if she rules him, never shows she rules;
Charms by accepting, by submitting sways,
Yet has her humour most, when she obeys;
Let Fops or Fortune fly which way they will;
Disdains all loss of Tickets, or Codille;
Spleen, Vapours, or Small-pox, above them all,
And Mistress of herself, tho' China fall. (257-68)
Pope's technique of returning to the "unclouded ray" of the "morrow" and the "day," enables him to acclaim the sympathies of his "Lady" in the light of the sun (257-8). Pope reveals this new relationship to the natural world just as he begins to describe what
82 Jackson 97. 108 appears to be a private setting. His lady appears in more of a domestic setting, and, as such, appears to have the private life most women lack. Pope sees light here to emphasize the day-light humour which sustains the lady in all of her pursuits. She has no revulsion for a private life, nor does her private life dissociate her from the natural world. And, as such, Pope's desire to see virtue in his lady transforms into a rapt appreciation of the real and present lady.
Pope lauds his lady for possessing the sympathy, or the "right" imagination he saw perverted in the vices over the course of the poem. Pope emphasizes her ability to imagine, understand, and respond to the feelings and needs of others. And with his example, Pope returns to women what is rightfully theirs, a private, virtuous life.
Between the lady and her "Sister" or "Daughter," familial relations which might still be employed between friends and comrades outside of the home, Pope reveals his lady's ability to respond to pleasures and to the "charms" of others without envy or malice (259-
60). His lady is not envious of another's "charm," rather, she can "love a sister's
Charms." Likewise, the "Lady" can "hear" (a quality which Pope emphasizes by enjambing the line) the "sighs" of another without being "wounded" (259-60). The
"sighs" affirm the lady's ability to "hear" and to respond to the desires and needs of others. And, in describing the lady's marital relationship, Pope presents the kind of
"celebration of female constancy" which Carolyn Williams identifies as more common in poetry as the century progressed.
With the "Husband," Pope lauds not only the lady's sympathy or fellow feeling but also her self-possession. Pope pays attention to lady's powers of listening to and
83 Carolyn Williams, "The Changing Face of Change: Fe/male In/constancy," British Journal for Eighteenth Century Studies 12 (1989) 21. 109 judging the needs of another while keeping her own "Temper," which in reference to the
"softness" of "most women" in relation to "gold," makes for spiritual strength (256, 3).
Blount is both able to gauge and to wait for when a "Husband cools," and sensitive enough to "never show she rules" (261-2).84 To "charm by accepting" and to "sway" by
"submitting" appear paradoxical (263). However, Pope proves this not an irregularity or lack of heart, but the imagination of a virtuous ruling passion in self and spouse. In her
"obedience," the woman appears to keep "her humour" (264), thus upholding her marital vows to "love, honour, and obey" by obeying not only her spouse, but her own good sense. Pope's lady, in this light, still appears to have attributes of both ruling passions, both pleasure and sway. And she uses these simultaneously. Pope presents a person who listens to others and who responds to them without imposing her needs upon them or rendering herself powerless to them. Moreover, this woman remains "Mistress of herself," exhibiting independence (268). Indeed, to support Pollak's notion that the
"Lady" is "playing by the system" because "resignation is a functional requirement of feminine good humour, which covers and ameliorates loss" is to deny Martha, in her
"obedience," the "obedience" she pays to her own humour and to her ruling passion."
And Pope makes a particular virtue of this kind of obedience or self-possession, such a
Pope refers to Martha Blount in this passage. As Pollak argues, Blount was unmarried, "Martha's maternal and wifely status is a feature of special critical interest since, in point of fact, Pope's friend was both single and childless" and she suggests that the moon association "provides a hint of a historical spinsterhood," Pollak 126. However, Pope's relation to Blount was, according to many of his close friends, that of an intimate friend. Pope's will, which leaves the bulk of his estate to Blount, certainly provides proof of his own devotion, The Garden and the City 263-5. However, as Valerie Rumbold emphasizes, "we have very little direct evidence" of Blount's feelings for Pope, Rumbold 251-94. Thus, indeed, Pope "hides" his addressee in plain sight, while referring to her status as the object of his devotion whose returns remain anonymous to his readers, at least, if not to himself, a wife who is thus able to maintain her own humour or sway most effectively. 85 Pollak 115-16. 110 fine "Temper" in the final two poems in the sequence, particularly the "Epistle to
Burlington."
Pope reprises his work on the optics of the opening strides of the "Epistle to
Cobham" to confirm the lady's relationship to "Heav'n" and to celebrate her virtuous fancy. With Pope's statement that "woman at best is a contradiction still," he appears to revoke his assessment of his lady's superior nature (270). However, Pope proves that such "Contradiction" proves a sympathetic blend of attributes created by "Heav'n" itself
(270-1). Heaven's "strife" produces something substantial, and as Hagstrum suggests,
"real," in its mixture of "male" and "female" qualities:
Heav'n, when it strives to polish all it can
Its last best work, but forms a softer Man;
Picks from each sex, to make the Fav'rite blest,
Your love of Pleasure, our desire of Rest,
Blends, in exception to all gen'ral rules,
Your Taste of Follies, with our Scorn of Fools,
Reserve with Frankness, Art with Truth ally'd,
Courage with Softness, Modesty with Pride,
Fix'd Principles, with Fancy ever new;
Shakes all together, and produces - You. (271-80)
In the "Epistle to Cobham," Pope presented the "strife" of various characteristics within the solid, prismatic "Man" which produced something equally divided, "opinion." Still, in so doing, Pope suggested that "Man" remained a substantial being, despite one's consideration of the self-in-consciousness. Here, "Heav'n" plays the roles of "prism," Ill mixer of paints, and forger or "polisher" of precious objects (271). Heaven "blends" the
"best" of each sex, to produce something as substantial - the "You" of the poem (280).
And it is the "Fancy ever new" endowed by heaven and reproduced, in some form, in the woman, which rhymes with and, as such, completes "You" (279). Thus, Pope reprises the optics and the geological references of the "Epistle to Cobham" to assert his faith in the consistency of identity, at least as it applies to "Virtue," if not to vice. And he confirms the alliance of his "Lady" and, most particularly, her "Fancy" with "Heav'n."
Promoting the need for a consistent virtue, though not, indeed, an inflexible one,
Pope presents a blend of characteristics in Blount which might easily transform into vice.
Pollak considers Pope's lady only a newer version of the "woman as lack" he presents throughout the poem. And Noggle, though more moderate, identifies in Pope the "most subtle recuperation of the superiority of the male position."87 However, as Jean
Hagstrum suggests, Pope's ideal woman has to be "real:"
For even in the 'softer Man' a 'Taste of Follies' and an unprincipled reign of
'Fancy ever new' persist - perhaps at the very price of being human. Such a
woman Pope can admire and love; a paragon he could not, for she might be only a
Platonic version of the frigid 'Decencies' of Cloe.88
The lady, while created or chosen by "Heav'n" as if a paragon, is not a paragon, but a human (271). Particularly when one considers Pope's discussion of the oppression of the ruling passion as aperversion of the innate "Love" of "Pleasure" and "Sway" inherent in woman, "softness," "Taste of Follies" and "Scorn of Fools" need not be associated with vice. Nor are "Fix'd Principles" dangerous if one's "Love" is properly cultivated. To be
86 Pollak 110. See also Rumbold 278-9. 87 Noggle 179. 88 Hagstrum, Sex and Sensibility 142. 112
"fix'd," in this instance, is to continually renew both one's imagination of virtue within and one's imagination of the virtue in others. Thus, I agree with Patricia Meyer Spacks, who sees Blount as a metaphor "for the whole range of positive being and action open to women." Still, Felicity Nussbaum's sense that Pope remains "uncertain" of "most women's ability to inspire and sustain universal harmony" is likewise applicable.90 For
Pope shows that such virtue, while it might be available to all, is not easily identified or executed.
To confirm his lady's virtuous imagination and to approve of her "Sense," Pope's reprises and re-orients his previous consideration of the relationship between the "sun" and gems or the "mines" both in the "Epistle to Cobham" and in the earlier lines of this poem. And, with this, Pope's consideration of his lady's virtues extends beyond the private or domestic world, becoming of national importance. With Cobham, Pope waxed ironic about envisioning his friend in his death-bed to observe his ruling passion. Yet in so doing, he suggested that to experience a virtuous ruling passion is to "feel" it
"strong"91 in life as in death. When Pope describes his lady's "Fame," which should be every "Woman's," he describes not her death, but the moment of her birth, a moment already in fact, a part of history (281). Recalling his lady's birth, when her "blue eyes first open'd on the sphere," Pope sees:
The gen'rous God, who Wit and Gold refines
And ripens Spirits as he ripens Mines,
Kept Dross for Duchesses, the world shall know it,
To you gave Sense, Good-humour, and a Poet (289-92).
89 Patricia M. Spacks, An Argument of Images (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1971) 167. 90Nussbauml57. 91 "Cobham" 263-4. 113
This "Fame," presented on behalf of a woman who obviously does not seek praise or fame, contrasts with the vanishing "ring" of fame-seekers which Pope presents at the outset of this portrait in that Pope presents birth as opposed to death (281, 251). And, with his "Lady," Pope confirms not only the regard of "Heav'n," but also the regard of its related ego, the God of the sun (271, 283). As a tribute to the lady's present virtues and as a promise of her future glory, Pope observes that Phoebus' sun endows the lady with superior virtues at birth. Thus, Pope re-considers his ruling passion theory in a positive light by providing an example of a person who does not pervert this virtue beyond recognition. Pope aligns his "Lady" with "Cobham" in their cultivation of virtuous ruling passion. And, if only in view of this association, the "Fame" of the lady appears of national importance (281).
Pope re-orients his discussion of the influence of "Heav'n" upon the "Mines" to the good when he describes the creation of his lady's "Spirit" by the influence of the sun
(271, 290). Pope sees the generous God identified by Weinbrot, that discretionary figure interfering with the "Pray'r" of the lady's "Parents" so as to give as much good "Sense" as "Beauty," and thus, to separate the lady from the "Dross" (286-8, 291). Pope's metaphor considers not the creation of material objects which people invest with spiritual significance but to the ripening of "Spirit" itself (290). His lady's goodness is spiritual, not material, the kind of "Sense" and "Good-humour" one attains by cultivating and properly using one's imagination (292). Thus, even if Pope was aware that the theory of heavenly influence was passing into the realm of "vulgar error," his metaphor remains appropriate because of its insistence upon the relationship between "Heav'n" and
Martha's "Spirit" as opposed to her materiality (271, 290). And it also emphasizes the 114 decline and decay Pope associates with "Dross" and "Duchesses" (291). Phoebus, the
"God" of the "Mines" produces nothing material but all that is spiritual in the lady's
"Sense" and "Good-humour" (285, 290-92). And, by aligning himself with these imagined graces, Pope sends himself, or his own "Good-humour," along to his lady for approval (292).
Thus, by meeting his ambitions for his lady with a consideration of the virtues of her every-day life and with a confirmation of that virtue in the "Fame" of her birth (281),
Pope suggests that the imagination might be employed well. One might act virtuously by imagining and responding to the needs of others for their sake. Yet, as Pope suggests here, one can and must be generous without rendering or resigning one's will or one's imagination. Pope's earlier consideration of his own attraction to defect, in this light, affirms not only the need to admire beauty and truth, and thus, Martha Blount, it also affirms the need to retain one's own "humour" when considering the "Spirit" of another
(292, 290). With his extensive praise and with the "Fame" of Martha Blount, Pope re orients his representation of natural phenomena to the good, pausing at last, or, considering the opening throes of the "Epistle to Bathurst," only temporarily, to identify a woman of virtuous imagination (281). And, in so doing, he identifies not only the good
"Sense" but also the self-possession he comes to require of the sequence's final two addressees (292). III. "GOOD SENSE" AS RADICAL IMAGINATION: POPE'S EPISTLES TO BATHURST AND BURLINGTON
When one considers Pope's references to external nature in the Epistles to Several
Persons, the "Epistle to Bathurst" and the "Epistle to Burlington" bear more than a
"family resemblance"1 to the "Epistle to Cobham" and the "Epistle to a Lady." In the final two poems of the sequence, Pope continues to compare human behaviour to the behaviour of external nature to espouse the '"right use' of the imagination."2 Still, as
Miriam Leranbaum suggests, the last two poems read as a "closely linked pair of companion pieces."3 While identifying one's "ruling passion" and treating others with sympathy are by no means discrete projects in the first two epistles, Pope fuses his interests in the final two poems. Over the course of the epistles to Bathurst and
Burlington, Pope teaches the '"right use' of imagination" by identifying the necessity for and espousing the cultivation of "Good Sense."4 Pope confirms what he already intimates in the previous poems, that employing "Good Sense" requires imagining and responding temperately to the virtue in the self and in others and to the genius of the natural world. To do so is to make the radical choice to become "of a mind" with
"Heav'n."5
Re-Imagining Extremes
In the "Epistle to Bathurst," Pope refers to external nature and to the natural phenomena of the previous epistles to identify the need for the individual both to imagine
1 Leranbaum, Alexander Pope's 'Opus Magnum' 180. 2 Fairer, Pope's Imagination 111. 3 Leranbaum 125. 4 "Burlington" 43. 5 "Bathurst" 8.
115 116 and to navigate between extremes of "Self-love" and "Good-nature" (228). To do so is to imitate heaven in its creation and maintenance of order in nature and among humankind.
Earl R. Wasserman argues that Pope treats individual morality in the poem as a means of
"'easing' the care of heaven:"
The world is in God's hands, which can, preternaturally, reconcile vicious
extremes. But morality is an affair of the private individual and it is his duty to
'ease' the care of Heaven by reducing the need for Concordia discors: for if man
were to follow the mean between extremes, there would be no need for Heaven to
balance and harmonize vices.6
Particularly when one considers Pope's comparison of external nature and human nature in this poem and over the course of the sequence, Pope presents the individual's reconciliation of extremes in the self as a project of imagination. To "ease, or emulate, the care of Heav'n," one must imagine and imitate heaven's benevolence and harmonizing powers (230). One aspect of such benevolence is the imagination of vice as virtue taken to an extreme, a practice Pope introduces in the "Epistle to a Lady" and which he espouses over the course of the opening of the "Epistle to Bathurst." To suggest that his own view of "Self-love" and "Good-nature" is a radical means of considering human nature (228), Pope refers to "Nature" in the poem's opening to present an opinion about the vicious characters of men which he re-frames over the course of the poem (9).
Pope first champions the benevolence of "Heav'n" and "Nature" while relegating
"Man" to two vicious extremes (7-14). Bathurst, according to Pope, believes that men are the '"standing jest of Heav'n" and that "Gold [is] but sent to keep the fools in play, /
6 Earl R. Wasserman, Pope's Epistle to Bathurst 39 (cit. "Bathurst" 230: "And ease, or emulate, the care of Heav'n"). 117
For some to heap, and some to throw away" (4-6). Pope presents a view of a more benevolent "Heav'n," perhaps, though not a better "Man":
But I, who think more highly of our kind,
(And, surely, Heav'n and I are of a mind)
Opine, that Nature, as in duty bound,
Deep hid the shining mischief under ground:
But when by Man's audacious labour won,
Flam'd forth this rival to its Sire, the Sun,
Then careful Heav'n supply'd two sorts of Men,
To squander these, and those to hide agen. (7-14)
As both Earl Wasserman and Howard Weinbrot suggest, Pope presents a benevolent
Christian model of heaven to contrast Bathurst's pagan one.7 While Bathurst's theory lacks direct reference to "Nature," Pope's "Nature" initially "hides" the "shining mischief underground," as if it was its "duty" to protect men from avarice (9-10). And "Heav'n's" treatment of man is not to keep him a "standing jest" but to create a "careful" balance between two "sorts," the miser and the profligate (4,13). Yet, in Pope's world, as in
Bathurst's, "Heav'n" supplies "two sorts" of avaricious men (13). For Pope's miser, the accumulation of wealth is not "heaping" but "hiding," an action akin to that of "Nature" when it "hid" gold from man (6, 10, 14). And this hiding and the subsequent "audacious labour" of men recalls the fallen angels in Paradise Lost who "rifle the bowels of their mother earth / For treasures better hid"8 so as to build their Pandemonium (11).
Moreover, the profligate's "squander[ing]" appears similar to Bathurst's model of man's
7 Weinbrot, Alexander Pope and the Traditions of Verse Satire 175-7; Wasserman 19-20. 8 John Milton, Paradise Lost. Book I, 686-8 in 670-730, The Complete English Poems. Ed. Gordon Campbell (Toronto: Knopf, 1980) 171-2. 118
"throwfing] away" (14, 6). Thus, both Pope and Bathurst relegate "Man" to one of two extremes.9
Yet, particularly when considered in relation to the closing lines of the "Epistle to a Lady," Pope presents the possibility of exceptions to his rule. The "Epistle to a Lady" concludes with the "Fame" of Pope's "Lady," Martha Blount, in which Pope refers to a geological phenomenon to emphasize her good "Sense."10 When read in sequence, the lady's geological "Fame" is ail-too brief. With the next, almost immediate reference to the generation of objects underground due to the influence of their "Sire, the Sun" (12),
Pope seeks not to identify the fine spirit or "Sense" of an individual, but the "mad spirituality" of the masses.11 As in the bulk of the Epistles thus far, Pope emphasizes humanity's "audacious" imaginative "labour," the investment of too much importance in material objects or in vicious ideas (11). In the process, however, the lady remains exemplary for the rarity of her "Sense," particularly, her sympathy for others.
Likewise, Pope makes himself "of a Mind" with "Heav'n," setting the stage for his proposition of a more distinctive mode of imagination (8). Pope's opinion of himself and others (and, transitively, his opinion of the "Lady" at the close of the previous poem) appears rather confident. Pope not only claims that he "thinks more highly of our kind," he emphasizes his alliance with heaven with parentheses: "(surely, Heav'n and I are of a mind)" (7-8). Pope appears to think less "highly of our kind" than he first suggests (7).
With his treatment of heaven's supplying the world with misers and squanderers, and by relegating "Man" to "two sorts," Pope might just be calling attention to his own dark or
9 This is confirmed energetically by Rebecca Ferguson, The Unbalanced Mind 100; Tom Jones, "Pope's Epistle to Bathurst and the Meaning of Finance," SEL 44.3 (Summer 2004) 501; James Engell, "Wealth and Words: Pope's 'Epistle to Bathurst,'" Modern Philology 85.4 (May 1988) 435. 10 "Lady" 281-92. 11 Edwards, This Dark Estate 62-3. 119 punitive stance (13). Still, he points to his own distinction from "Man," as he signals his lady's separation from "Most Women" in the "Epistle to a Lady." And, over the course of the poem, he teaches that this alternative and exceptional mode of behaviour is available not only to himself but also to his audience. He comes to associate "audacious labour" not with vice but with the individual's imagination and cultivation of the virtues of self- love and good-nature endowed by heaven (11).
In the lines between his initial observation of "two sorts" (1-13) and his revaluation of these "Extremes in Man" as they relate to "Extremes in Nature" (153-70),
Pope refers to nature to criticize the avarice he identifies in the poem's opening, identifying dark visions of decay and decline which result in hatred of self and others
(14-152). Pope does not discriminate between miser and profligate until he asserts his own "truth" about the relationship between the order in the natural and social worlds
(153-70ff.). Rather, Pope treats the avarice common to both "sorts" of men. He identifies an acute and unnecessary disconnection between the sources or production of wealth and its expenditure in an economy in which paper money and less substantial forms of credit were replacing gold.12 And he reveals the imaginative basis of this disconnection by suggesting that those who "riot" while others "starve" are motivated by visions of natural, social, and political devastation (24).
As Miriam Leranbaum suggests, Pope presents the "rich" of the opening lines of the poem as "mad visionaries."13 Pope confirms his affinity with Bathurst in the opinion:
Riches in effect
12 For Pope's treatment of the economy see Vincent Caretta, "Pope's 'Epistle to Bathurst' and the South Sea Bubble," JEGP 77 (1978) 212-31; Peter Dixon, The World of Pope's Satires (London: Methuen, 1968) 122-52; David B. Morris, Alexander Pope: The Genius of Sense (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1984)179-213. 13 Leranbaum 91. 120
No grace of Heav'n or token of th'Elect;
Giv'n to the Fool, the Mad, the Vain, the Evil,
To Ward, to Waters, Chartres, and the Devil. (17-20)
While the critique of madness is aimed at men of influence, whom he compares to "the
Devil," it remains flexible (20). That riches are no sign of election could be as easily employed by people of lower or burgeoning middle classes to damn the landed elite as by the landed to damn the burgeoning citizenship.14 Moreover, the critique of the false
"grace" and "election" of the rich recalls Pope's emphasis upon the problem of identity- in-consciousness in the "Epistle to Cobham," a notion which immobilizes the person who reads character "too much" but which empowers Pope to teach the importance of identifying and acting upon a virtuous impulse (18). While Pope reveals a lack of
"grace" or "election" among these "Mad" men, he nonetheless suggests that such imaginative power might be put to better use (18-19). Therefore, he argues, riches remain
"Useful" in "serv[ing] what life requires" (29).
Pope condemns the audacious imaginations of the wealthy by referring to the
"wants" of nature:
What Nature wants, commodious Gold bestows,
'Tis thus we eat the bread another sows:
But how unequal it bestows, observe,
'Tis thus we riot, while who sow it, starve.
What Nature wants (a phrase I much distrust)
Extends to Luxury, extends to Lust:
And if we count among the Needs of life
14 Colley, Britons 254. Another's Toil, why not another's Wife? (21-28)
Pope personifies "Gold," dramatizing its "unequal" dissemination, to reveal a disconnection between labour and expenditure, between the production of wealth by human labour or its source in nature and its expense or consumption (21, 23). As
Edwards describes Pope's later figures, these men, too, "divorce riches by a kind of economic alchemy from the nature that is the source of all real value."15 Such a divide is the result of the improper employment of the imagination, the pursuit of "Luxury" and
"Lust" in place of the "Needs of life" (26-7).16 Here, Pope suggests that human needs extend beyond the physical. However, to consider nature wanting is not only to fail to recognize another's "Toil" but to fail to recognize the sacredness of marriage, to "count" another's "Wife" among one's "needs" (27-8). With these "heavily sarcastic lines,"17
Pope suggests that ignorance of "Another's Toil" is a vice similar or equivalent to one's making property of another man's wife.
Pope's reprise of the "high Life" passage from the "Epistle to Cobham" emphasizes the inadequacy of the "Visions" of the wealthy:
What Riches give us let us then enquire,
Meat, Fire, and Cloaths. What more? Meat, Cloaths, and Fire.
Is this too little? would you more than live?
Alas! 'tis more than Turner finds they give.
Alas! 'tis more than (all his Visions past)
15 Edwards 54. 16 Pope's "luxury" appears vicious. For a treatment of the transformation of the term over the course of the eighteenth century "from a myth to a fiction, from an ethic to a prejudice, and from an essential, general element of moral theory to a minor, technical element of economic theory," John Sekora, Luxury (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1977) 112 et passim. 17 Leranbaum 92 (challenging Wasserman's position that the passage lacks satire). 18 "Cobham" 87-100. 122
Unhappy Wharton, waking, found at last!
What can they give? to dying Hopkins Heirs;
To Chartres, Vigour, Japhet, Nose and Ears?
Can they, in gems bid pallid Hippia glow,
In Fulvia's buckle ease the throbs below,
Or heal, old Narses, thy obscener ail,
With all th'embroid'ry plaister'd at thy tail? (81-92)
Pope, drawing from Horace, counts only "meat, clothes, and fire" among the
"necessities" of life.19 By noting that "riches" cannot "give" more than essential food, clothing, and warmth, Pope implies that it is the mind or imagination which must, then,
"give" more. Yet the imaginations of those he describes are poorly employed.
A difference between Pope's treatment of "high Life" here and in the previous epistles is that Pope details the individual's failed attempts to meet his or her needs as opposed to the combined efforts of both the individual and the flatterer (as in "Cobham") or the artist and his subject (as in "Lady"). Although Wharton's "Visions" are over (he
91 dies in "Cobham"), Pope justly sets him alongside figures who attempt to meet inordinate desires or to prolong their lives with material items so as to reveal their distorted imaginations (85). Pope prefaces seemingly minor offences of imagination with the outrageous fancies of the dead. Chartres cannot revive the "vigour" which kept his
Horace, Satire I. i. 73-5: "nescis quo valeat nummus, quernpraebeat usum?/panis ematur, holus, vini sextarius; adde/quis humana sibi doleat natura negatis," or, "Don't you know what money is for, what end it serves? You may buy bread, greens, a measure of wine, and such other things as would mean pain to our human nature, if withheld." Horace, Satires, Epistles and Ars Poetica, Trans. H. Rushton Fairclough, Loeb (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1929) 10-11. 20 "Lady" 181-98. 21 "Cobham" 204. home a "perpetual bawdy-house" nor can Crook, the forger, retrieve the "Nose and
Ears" he lost upon being punished for his crimes (88). In this light, the crimes of Hippia,
Fulvia, and Narses, who attempt to fulfill their "wants" and "obscener ails," their fancied spiritual or physical needs, with "gems," "buckles," and "embroidery," appear serious
(89-92). That "gems" do not make Hippia "glow" (89) recalls the heaping of gems upon the Queen, and the judgment of superior character of men of fine appearance in the previous "high Life" passages. Yet the actions of the figures in the poem appear tragic because they are attempts by an individual to treat an imagined and inordinate need or desire with an inappropriate object. Such abuse is epitomized in Narses' attempt to
"plaister" his "tail" with "embroidery" (92).
Pope refines his discussion of the improper employment of the imagination with the imagined slavery of Bond, Sir Gilbert and Blunt:
Yet, to be just to these poor men of pelf,
Each does but hate his Neighbour as himself:
Damn'd to the Mines, an equal fate betides
The Slave that digs it, and the Slave that hides.
Who suffer thus, mere Charity should own,
Must act on motives pow'rful, tho' unknown:
Some War, some Plague, or Famine they foresee,
Some Revelation hid from you and me. (109-16)
Having already skirted the question of the "poor" taking their "part" in such avarice by observing the hatred of the "poor" by Bond, Sir Gilbert, Blunt, and the Bishop (101-8),
Pope again refers to these men as "poor men of pelf." He reveals a poverty of spirit or
22 In ESP 83-4n20, Pope details the vicious life of Chartres. For Japhet Crook, see ESP 93-4n88. imagination as opposed to physical poverty. "Pelf," as Wasserman emphasizes, is
"stolen" money.23 And, being "damned" to the "Mines" recalls the "old Justinian legal code" of "damnare in mefaHc," the "most severe noncapital punishment" (1 ll).24 Pope sees his figures punished or punishing themselves, imaginatively, for the kind of crimes against the nation in which they are secretly or openly involved yet which often go without severe punishment.25 Pope's discussion of the mind's "slavery," as Wasserman suggests, refers to what had become a common-place treatment of St. Chrysostom that
"no matter how painful the state of the prisoner in the mines, that of the avaricious man, who has voluntarily damned himself to the mines of riches is far worse' '(112).26 Yet
Wasserman's argument that their "damnation" is "entirely free of irony or personal satire" requires amendment (111).27 Considering Pope's references to geology throughout the sequence and his references to starvation and riot in this poem, the damnation of the imaginations of his "poor men" to the "Mines" emphasizes their disconnection from the production of wealth (nature, God and other men) (109, 111).
Their lack of charity for the poor further emphasizes this divide.
Especially when read in relation to the previous epistles in the sequence, Pope's representation of the dark visions which motivate such "slavery," such hatred of self and others reveals the improper employment of imagination (112). When Pope introduces the ruling passion with the example of a perverted imagination in the "Epistle to Cobham,"
23 Wasserman 28. 24 Wasserman 28. 25 Pope is well aware of the severe punishments available for crimes related to the economy, as evidenced in Japhet, and later, Balaam, who "hangs," in "Burlington" 209; Sir Gilbert, Bond, and the Bishop (Robert Sutton) may have been penalized but did not lose their lives for their crimes, see ESP 96-8nl02-7; Pope notes Blunt's more heinous offences, including the South Sea Bubble, and assesses his punishment in ESP 101-2nl35. 26 Wasserman 28. 27 Wasserman 28. 125 he observes that "Something as dim to our internal view" becomes the "cause of most we do." Likewise, Pope suggests that the "hatred" of self and others which perverts the
Christian lesson of loving one's neighbour as oneself arises because of fearsome visions of "War," "Plague," and "Famine" taken from "Revelation" (115-16). Pope's notion that these "Revelation[s]" are "hid from you and me" does not confirm the "hidden" state of these motives, at least, not to Pope and his audience (116). Rather, Pope discusses the
"hidden" state of these "Revelations" to dissociate himself (as well as his addressee, his audience, and perhaps, the poor, in general) from those motivated by such dark visions.
Thus, as Pope emphasizes the lack of "Charity" in the lives of those who act upon visions of natural and social decline, he reveals, howsoever ironically, his own propensity to imagine and to act upon a brighter vision of nature and society (113).
Pope exemplifies the dark motivating vision of avarice in his "wizard's" prophecy of a "deluge" (136-46). Blunt, like Sir Balaam at the end of the poem, and like the bastions of bad "taste" in the "Epistle to Burlington," expresses not his own vision as such. Rather, he presents either his own vision disguised as another's or the prophecy of another man entirely:30
A wizard told him in these words our fate:
'At length Corruption, like a gen'ral flood,
'(So long by watchful Ministers withstood)
'Shall deluge all; and Av'rice creeping on,
M "Cobham," 49-50. 29 Matt. 22.39. See also Wasserman 27-9. 30 Pope suggests that this prophecy is in the "style" of Blunt's own "declaiming] against the corruption and luxury of the age" after considering Blunt's work as director of the South Sea company. ESP 101-2n.l35; The "wizard" is often considered to be Sir Robert Walpole. For a treatment of Walpole's similar complaints see Bateson's commentary, ESP 103nl50. 126
'Spread like a low-born mist, and blot the Sun;
'Statesman and Patriot ply alike the stocks,
'Peeress and Butler share alike the Box,
'And Judges job, and Bishops bite the town,
'And mighty Dukes pack cards for half a crown.
'See Britain sunk in lucre's sordid charms,
'And France reveng'd of ANNE'S and EDWARD'S arms!' (136-46)
Blunt refers to natural phenomena to deliver a prophecy of the doom of a social economy which, as Pope implies, he initiates and sustains. The wizard sees the spread of
"Corruption" as if a natural disaster, a "flood" or "deluge" (137, 139). Likewise, recalling
Milton's description of Satan's entrance into Eden, he warns that "Av'rice" threatens
"like a low-born mist" to "blot the Sun" (139-40). Yet his emphasis, unlike even those previous, though more mysterious visions of "Plague" and "Famine" (115) in the poem, is not upon the natural world but upon the "Corruption" and "Av'rice" of a social world, chiefly, the corruption of high life (137, 139). That these phenomena describe the ups and downs of the theatre and the gambling table underscores the shoddiness of the wizard's dark vision.
Indeed, the vision of the wizard, the "deluge," remains relatively minor in its expanse, despite the very substantial corruption Pope uses it to reveal (139). The "low- born mist" is Pope's final reference to the "progress" or transformation of "gold" into
"credit" over the course of the poem (35-78). Pope traces the gradual replacement of gold or "bulky Bribes" with, "paper-credit," referring to the natural world to detail the manner
31 John Milton, Paradise Lost IX, 75, 158, 180 (cit. in Wallace Jackson, Vision and Re-Vision in Alexander Pope 105). 32 Jackson 104-5. in which wealth becomes less and less material (35, 69). What is dissociated from its source becomes that which forms the basis for treason and treachery. Traitors are no longer exposed by the "gingling" of their coins down the "back-stairs" (67). Rather,
"secret Gold saps on from knave to knave" (38), and "the Scrap unseen" floats with "the winds" and "sells a King or buys a Queen" (76-78). Adding to Wasserman's account of the religious references in the poem, particularly Christian charity, I would suggest that
Pope's representation of paper credit emphasizes the perversion of Matthew 6.1-4, the notion that charity should be performed in secret. And the secrecy and treason of the card table represented by the sale of the "King and Queen" and of a "France reveng'd of
ANNE'S and EDWARD'S arms," makes for a staunch critique of such a perversion of the
Christian lesson (78, 146). Thus, indeed, the wizard's relegation of the treacheries of state to the gaming table makes Pope's criticism of corruption more potent.
Likewise, Pope's consideration of the wizard's trivial fears of the levelling of distinctions between figures of high life functions as a means of criticizing social and political error while relegating a dark and dim internal view to the wizard himself. As
Wasserman suggests, "Pope can use the vision to lash at the current vices of riches."
Pope criticizes his wizard by making his fears of social if not national devastation ironically trivial, the intrigues of the "Box" and the gaming table, as opposed to the business of the state (142). His public figures become relegated, as the public women in the previous poem, to a life of cards.34 Still, Pope can envision the potential devastation of the people and of the land such hypocrisy perpetuates. And, as Pat Rogers argues,
Wasserman 31. "Lady" 243-4. Pope cannily identifies the faults of both villains and their critics in the poem. While
"Statesmen" and "Patriots" represent politicians in or out of office, Pope unites them by considering their love of money or profits (141). Yet, with this ironic revelation, Pope perhaps implies that Blunt or Walpole fear a more devastating levelling of distinctions than they express, not only a levelling of distinctions of men of a similar social class, or between masters and servants seated together in the "Box," but between those who slave or labour and those whose lives are centered around the "Box" and gaming table (142).
Here, Pope's own dissatisfaction with the treachery of credit and its detrimental effects upon the nation are reiterated by the wizard in his discussion of gambling. And, as such,
Pope condemns the wizard's darkness while expressing his criticism under the protection of such darkness.
When Pope reprises the ruling passion theory of the previous two epistles, he presents a benevolent "truth" which contrasts the dark visions that motivate his figures of avarice:
'All this is madness,' cries a sober sage:
But who, my friend, has reason in his rage?
'The ruling Passion, be it what it will,
'The ruling Passion conquers Reason still.'
Less mad the wildest whimsy we can frame,
Than ev'n that Passion, if it has no Aim;
For tho' such motives Folly you may call,
The Folly's greater to have none at all. (153-60)
35 Pat Rogers, "Sir Balaam and an Ass: Pope, Atterbury, and Coningsby," The Review of English Studies 55.222(2004)717. Pope, identifying such 'madness as "rage" without "reason," emphasizes the poor employment of the imaginations of his vicious characters (153-4). The observation of
"madness" by the "sage" is likely that of Bathurst, whom Pope refers to as his "friend" in the succeeding line (153-4). Thus, Bathurst's "sagacity" (154) contrasts the wizard's association with "idolatry and familiar spirits." Likewise, Pope emphasizes his own self-possession. His lines on the ability of the "ruling Passion" to "conquer Reason" are more difficult to attribute, in that one might first consider them the words of Bathurst or the "sage" (156, 154). Yet with this, Pope emphasizes that he is quoting himself, or, at least, he is reprising ideas from elsewhere in the sequence of poems. Unlike Blunt, or, later, Balaam, and the men of poor taste in the next epistle, he reveals that he relies upon his own vision or "truth" rather than attributing it to or slavishly copying it from another
(161).
Pope refers to his discussion of the ruling passion in the previous epistles, or, if one searches further abroad, in An Essay on Man, by confirming that the vicious characters in the poem remain blind to their ruling passions.37 Still, as in the previous epistles, Pope defends his theory of the ruling passion: "the Folly's greater to have none at all" (160). Again, Pope confirms the necessity of employing the imagination in order to become conscious of one's ruling passion, signalling one's potential to act upon this envisioned quality with the "Reason" his vicious characters lack, or which they employ for vicious ends (156). As Pope has suggested throughout the epistles, no one lacks passion or reason. To fail both to identify one's passion as virtue and to act upon it with good reason is to choose to act malevolently. Thus, Pope echoes or might even be said to
Wasserman 31. James Noggle, The Skeptical Sublime 165. 130 amplify the concerns of Horace who reminds people of their choice to be miserable as he leaves them to their misery, "iubeas miserum esse, libenter / quatenus idfacit."
Pope's reprise of the debate of the poem's opening offers a model of harmony which contrasts the tragic visions of the men of avarice who eschew their connection with the sources of their wealth. Pope envisions a benevolent universal order. Extremes in man and nature are brought to "good" or "useful" ends by the harmonizing powers of a benevolent "Heav'n":
Hear then the truth: "Tis Heav'n each Passion sends,
'And diff rent men directs to diff'rent ends.
'Extremes in Nature equal good produce,
'Extremes in Man concur to gen'ral use.'
Ask we what makes one keep, and one bestow?
That Pow'R who bids the Ocean ebb and flow,
Bids seed-time, harvest, equal course maintain,
Thro' reconcil'd extremes of drought and rain,
Builds Life on Death, on Change Duration founds,
And gives th'eternal wheels to know their rounds. (161-70)
As if to remain consistent with the poem's opening, Pope does not suggest that men are less extreme in their behaviour. Rather, Pope suggests that heaven creates extremes in man and in nature and reconciles them to achieve social and natural balance or harmony.
Still, while Pope continues to identify extremes in humankind, he allows for more diversity than in the poem's opening. Peter Dixon suggests, "the human extremes here are not miserliness and profligacy, but 'keeping' and 'bestowing,'" the latter of which
38 Horace, Satire I. i. 63-4, pp. 8-9: "Bid him be miserable, since that is his whim." 131
"suggests charitable giving." Additionally, while "Heav'n" endows people with their ruling passions, each "Passion" is sent or placed within "diff rent men" to fulfill
"diff rent ends" (161-2). This diversity of passions might be qualified by Pope's opening statement about the creation of only "two sorts" of men (13) or by his discussion of the similar relegation of women to a "Love of Pleasure" and "Sway" in the "Epistle to a
Lady."40 However, Pope marks a return to the kind of flexibility with which he accounts for the virtues of Cobham and his lady.
In opposition to the wizard's view of imminent decline "as if an extreme in the natural world but with little attention to the natural world itself, Pope presents heaven's harmonization of "Extremes" in "Man" in tandem with the creation of order of the
"Extremes" in the natural world. Rephrasing lines from An Essay on Man, "Extremes in
Nature equal ends produce, / In Man they join to some mysterious use,"41 Pope emphasizes a resemblance between "Nature" and "Man." In this epistle, however, the
"reconcil'd extremes" prove less mysterious (168). Rather, they are "good" and "useful"
(163-4).42 In any case, Pope's employment of quotation, even if one cannot account for the source, presents the kind of bright truth which trumps the wizard's dark prophecy.
And Pope founds his "truth" in an example drawn from nature (161). Extremes of
"drought and rain" in the natural world "found" "Duration" in their change (168-70). As
Edwards argues, "nature is available as a measure of goodness."43 And, through the cycles of "seed-time" and "harvest," Pope suggests an "equal course" or goodness in
"Man" (167-8).
39 Dixon 196. 40 "Lady" 210. 41 Alexander Pope, "Epistle II," An Essay on Man 11. 205-6, pp. 79-80. 42 Leranbaum 102. 43 Edwards 55. 132
Pope presents his benevolent vision of "reconcil'd extremes" as an alternative to the visions which motivate the avaricious (168). Contrary to Blunt, he presents less a
"fate" for the future (he saves this for the closing of the "Epistle to Burlington") than a
"truth" about the consistent order in man and nature and their inherent virtue (136, 161).
Still, this truth requires the proper employment of the imagination, the view of an order created from extremes. Pope's "truth" reveals the benevolence and the harmonizing power of heaven (161). And he teaches that one must imitate heaven in one's own
"mind." When Wallace Jackson identifies "the endless art of transmuting bad to good" in
Pope as "not God's alone but man's," he calls this "art" a "burden of virtue."44
Borrowing from Samuel Johnson's definition of "audacious" as "bold; impudent; daring" but "always in a bad sense,"451 would identify this "art" not as a "burden" but as a "bold, impudent, and daring" task of imagination, and in the best sense.
Pope confirms that his own view of "reconcil'd extremes" in nature and humankind is a form of imagination, a radical benevolence of mind, by offering one last re-appraisal of the extremes in men as they apply to the individual, his addressee Bathurst
(168). Pope prefaces his address to Bathurst with a consideration of the miser and profligate so as to reveal a shift in his attitude towards profligacy and miserliness as they apply to men in general. To Bathurst, Pope attributes a radically benevolent attitude towards these extremes as they exist within the self. Pope espouses reconciling attributes which might, as Wasserman argues, prove "vicious"46 when taken to an extreme, but which do not necessarily stem from vicious motives. As in the "Epistle to a Lady," Pope suggests that one might consider vice as distorted virtue. With a mind of heaven, he re-
44 Jackson 105. 45 "Audacious." DEL. 46 Wasserman 39. 133 imagines miserliness as "mean Self-love" and profligacy as "mad Good-nature," and he suggests that his friend shares a similar "Sense" (228, 219).
It is only after Pope affirms his more "benevolent" view of nature and man that he presents examples of the "extremes" he first identifies in the poem's opening, miserliness
(179-98) and profligacy, or, in this case, prodigality (199-218). Cotta, like Blunt and those before him, fails to treat the poor charitably, wondering "who would take the Poor from Providence" (188). Yet Cotta differs from the previous figures of avarice in that his miserliness exists in his own self-denial: "If Cotta liv'd on pulse, it was no more / Than
Bramins, Saints, and Sages did before" (185-6). This, perhaps, is merely another form of self-hatred, though it compares somewhat favourably to the selfish indulgence of the previous figures. The son's difference from the vices appears more extensive in that he is a patriot, sapping his family seat, though for the good of his nation. This patriotism resembles that of Cobham, whom Pope treated favourably in the first epistle. However, it is an excessive view of the kind of patriotism Pope identifies as strength in Cobham, and is more rightly connected with the "lucre" of the statesmen and patriots in the wizard's vision (145).
Additionally, Pope considers these men's errors as they relate to the natural world. Pope considers the disastrous effects of Cotta's miserliness both upon the people and the land: "His court with nettles, moats with cresses stor'd" (183).47 And the animated natural world responds to the son's overzealousness: "The woods recede around the naked seat, / The Sylvans groan - no matter - for the Fleet" (209-10). Both among miser and prodigal, nature has been mismanaged, though not entirely forgotten. The miser chokes his property with produce, while the son, attempting to avoid the sins of the
47 For an assessment of Cotta's failed hospitality, see Dixon 82-3. father, wastes the "matter" at home to support his national affairs (210). Regarding the latter, Maynard Mack observes that the son's "land continues to be seen as a locus of invisible presences."48 With the sylvan groans, Pope mourns the son's failure to right his father's wrongs; and the "matter" (210) of which they complain recalls the missing
"Principle" sought after by the resigned materialist of Cobham. Still, Pope suggests, particularly of the prodigal, that "extremes" in men are not necessarily generated from bad motives (164). However, such seeming benevolence of mind might be said to produce more tragic results, in that the good end badly.
Pope's careful49 representation of "Bathurst" as man of "Sense" re-frames the
"Extremes" presented at the opening of the poem (219). Pope attributes Bathurst with
"Sense," that quality Pope already attributed to his lady and to which he refers as "Good
Sense" in the "Epistle to Burlington:"50
The Sense to value Riches, with the Art
T'enjoy them, and the Virtue to impart,
Not meanly, nor ambitiously pursu'd,
Not sunk by sloth, nor rais'd by servitude;
To balance Fortune by a just expence,
Join with (Economy, Magnificence,
With splendour, charity; with plenty, health;
Oh teach us, BATHURST! yet unspoil'd by wealth!
That secret rare, between th'extremes to move
48 Maynard Mack, The Garden and the City 96. 49 Ferguson claims that this passage was the most "carefully reworked" of the manuscript of the poem, in Ferguson 103. See Wasserman's reproduction of the manuscripts and transcription, Wasserman 66-7, 90- 91, 120-1, and 141. 50 "Lady" 292; "Burlington" 43-70. 135
Of mad Good-nature, and of mean Self-love. (219-28)
Here, "extremes" apply not to separate men but to the individual. Pope sees Bathurst endowed with two characteristics which previously divided "Men" in into "two sorts"
(13). As Wasserman argues, Pope espouses the Aristotelian principle of seeking the mean between extremes:
He seeks to identify liberality as the mean by speaking not only against 'one large
Vice' but also against 'its contrary'; and the ethical principle of the mean between
vicious extremes determines also his system of portraiture.51
Miserliness and profligacy, particularly when considered as characteristics of the individual mind, can be considered virtues taken to bad ends.
That the ruling passion theory appears to be replaced, then, by a model of tempering two virtues or passions within the self does not suggest that Pope overturns or rejects this theory. Pope has already hinted the potential presence of two "virtuous" ruling passions by negative example in the "Epistle to a Lady." Furthermore, the "Love" common to those two passions resembles the virtue inherent in "Self-love" and "Good nature" (228).52 For Pope, to have a mind of "Heav'n" is to envision an order in man and nature created by a benevolent, harmonizing power, and to imitate that power by both identifying the virtues endowed at birth and by continually harmonizing or reconciling those virtues in one's mind (8). Bathurst possesses, or, Pope desires Bathurst to possess53 this "secret rare" (227-8). Furthermore, Pope reveals, via Bathurst, that his own shift in
51 Wasserman 39. 52 See also Chapter Four. 53 Earl Wasserman and Howard Weinbrot differ in their view of the role of Bathurst as exemplar, particularly as this pertains to the Man of Ross. Wasserman suggests that Pope makes the Man of Ross available to Bathurst as a model of a Christian appreciation of the golden mean, Wasserman 42. Weinbrot, however, sees the Man of Ross as a student, a just "copy" of Bathurst, Weinbrot 177.1 follow Leranbaum's suggestion that since the "praise of Bathurst" is not "particularized" the Man of Ross does not "eclipse" Bathurst, Leranbaum 88-9. considering these "Extremes ' has been something of a false shift. A mindset in which one "ease[s]" or "emulate[s]" the "care of Heav'n," he intimates, has been his all along
(230).
"Good-Sense" as Self-Possession
In the second half of the "Epistle to Bathurst" (249-402) and over the course of the "Epistle to Burlington" (l-78ff.), Pope confirms that the proper use of the imagination is in the cultivation of virtue in the self, in other people and in the landscape. And Pope teaches the necessity of self-possession, the ability to maintain one's faith in one's own benevolence and harmonizing powers in some distinction from the genius one imagines in others and in nature. "Good Sense" is that rare secret Pope exemplifies in the Man of
Ross and which he attributes to both Bathurst and Burlington. It is the ability to imagine one's own virtues and to imagine the divinity in the landscape and in others without succumbing to mad or mean extremes of self-love and good-nature. To do so, Pope suggests, is to consider one's virtue or genius in some distinction from that of nature and of other men.
That Pope chooses to treat the Man of Ross as an example of a person who possesses this "secret rare" does not suggest that Bathurst's "Sense" is inadequate (227,
219). Pope aspires for Bathurst, as he aspires for all of the addressees of his epistles, the identification and cultivation of the good sense he identifies within them. To further condemn the wizard's fears of equality, Pope confirms that good sense is potentially expansive, endowed in most, if not all people, though rarely employed. In the Man of
Ross, Pope presents an individual who, in his difference from Bathurst, provides an alternative example of a person of "Sense" (219). In so doing, Pope emphasizes the necessary imagination of the divinity of the natural world. And, particularly when considered in reference to the portraits of possessed men that follow, the Man of Ross becomes a model of self-possession. He considers his own virtues in distinction from those of others and from those of nature so as to sustain and cultivate the good in all.
With the Man of Ross, or his portrait of John Kyrle,54 Pope suggests that the power of reconciling extremes in the self requires stewardship of the natural world:
Pleas'd Vaga echoes thro' her winding bounds,
And rapid Severn hoarse applause resounds.
Who hung with woods yon mountain's sultry brow?
From the dry rock who bade the waters flow?
Not to the skies in useless columns tost,
Or in proud falls magnificently lost,
But clear and artless, pouring thro' the plain
Health to the sick, and solace to the swain.
Whose Cause-way parts the vale with shady rows?
Whose Seats the weary Traveller repose?
Who taught that heav'n-directed spire to rise?
The MAN of ROSS, each lisping babe replies. (251-62)
One might want to reply, "God," and not the "Man of Ross" to the questions Pope poses here. Wondering about the person who might "hang woods" and who appears to possess the powers of a God or of Moses in "bid[ding]" "water" to flow from a "rock" (253-4),55
Pope emphasizes the exemplary work of the Man of Ross, his benevolence of mind and
54 Pope's identifies the model as John Kyrle (d.1724), though Bateson confirms that Pope admitted to some "small exaggeration" of his character to Tonson (CP 7 June 1732). See ESP 110n250. 55Exod. 17:1-7. 138 his harmonizing powers (253-4, 259). Edwards suggests that "he is projected almost as a pastoral magician, whose intentions are realized by nature without the intervention of physical agency."56 Yet this magic calls attention to his agency or, as Edwards later suggests, to the "natural reinforcement of human motives that we are to take very seriously."57 And the Man of Ross has generous and loving "motives."
While this appears to be the work of God in the creation, Pope reveals that the
Man of Ross brings order to the natural world, planting and building within the landscape. Pope's reference to the "hoarse"-ness of the Severn's "applause" suggests that the responsiveness of nature to Kyrle is realistic (252). Still, the distinction between man and God requires close reading. One must seek to identify the labour and the temperate imagination required to make this "artless" picture (257). The Man of Ross not only plants, he builds "spires" which are "heav'n-directed" but which do not appear to tempt the heights of Babel (261). Moreover, these gardening and building projects reflect his concerns for his people. That which he "parts" he forms into a "shade" (259). And the
"Cause-way" and "Seats" provide "Health to the sick" and "solace" to the "swain" (258-
60). Thus, while Pope emphasizes the ability of the Man of Ross to bring his good-nature to nature itself, he reveals the man's good-nature towards others. To be "artless," in this context, is not to avoid labour or to ignore the labourer but to lack pride and excessive consciousness (257). To be artless is to create within and thus, to temper and change one's surroundings in the manner of heaven, and in order to "ease" heaven's "care"
(230).58
Edwards 59. Edwards 59. See also Wasserman 39. 139
Pope presents the Man of Ross's charity, which Jackson considers the Man's
"ruling passion,"59 as a sustained and benevolent means of dealing with poverty and need as they exist in the world (263-74). While Pope is no labouring poet, he does not eschew the "fact of labour" as "uncongenial [...] to his imaginative world" as Leopold Damrosch argues. Indeed, Pope's Man of Ross is not so super-human as to erase want or toil. The need to accommodate labour and poverty is already evident in his building and planting work. Yet, in contrast to Cotta's son, this man does not impoverish himself or spoil his estate. Rather, he cares for his local population (and hence, sustains his local landscape) by relieving need, providing "weekly bread" and "alms" to "Age" and "Want" (264-266).
Pope calls attention to the man's sustained generosity, the provision of housing, care, and alms lacking in the portraits of high life throughout the sequence. Moreover, the man
"relieves" his people by serving as the local doctor and by mending "variance" without the need for "Quacks," "Courts," or "vile Attornies" (269-74). The self-possessed man
"Prescribes," sways, and judges without pride or consciousness and without a title (270).
By acknowledging that there is no "monument" erected for this "Man" (283),
Pope also reveals Kyrle's tempered self-love. The man leaves no money or legacy for the building of tomb or monument, nor do others build one for him. This reveals, in accordance with Matthew 6.1-4, the relative "silence" of his charitable actions, though he remains a public figure. For a man of some wealth who does his duty to the poor, there might be no escaping the public nature of one's alms-giving or the public gratitude expressed for this generosity. And the Man of Ross's memory is sustained, if not by the
iy Jackson 108. 60 Leopold Damrosch, The Imaginative World of Alexander Pope (Berkeley: University of California, 1987)76. 140
"lisping babes" of his age, then by Pope (262). Still, Kyrle escapes excessive and improper notoriety.
With the Man of Ross, Pope confirms that becoming of a mind with heaven is a radical power of the imagination which, though difficult to cultivate, remains available to many. When he reveals that the Man achieves this on "Five hundred pounds a year," suggesting that a little wealth or, a reasonable income, might be brought to provide sustained health for a man and for his community (280), ' Pope presents his revelation with irony: "Blush, Grandeur, blush! proud Courts, withdraw your blaze! / Ye little Stars! hide your diminish'd rays" (280-2). Pope's apostrophe, his imperative for courts and stars to withdraw, recalls the retreat of the profligate's family seat. This backward movement contrasts the more flexible response of nature to the Man of Ross (its growing, parting and retreating). However "superhuman"62 the Man of Ross appears, Pope emphasizes his alignment with human and earthly need, with charity and health as opposed to vanity and splendour. The difference between the "stars" and the earth emphasized by Pope's apostrophe reveals that to have a mind of heaven is to consider heaven's reconciliation of extremes in man and nature as it might be applied to this world, its landscape and its people.
Pope's references to external nature in the story of Sir Balaam, which closes the
"Epistle to Bathurst," validate the merits of the Man of Ross, most particularly his consistent charity and his reliance upon his own vision or truth. Briefly, Pope refers to natural phenomena to account for the devil's procurement of wealth for Balaam via
61 Johnson famously remarked that 50 pounds, "though by no means equal to the demands of Vanity and Luxury, is yet found sufficient to support families above want [...] undoubtedly more than the Necessities of Life require." Samuel Johnson, Life of Savage. Ed. Clarence Tracy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971) 96. 62 Leranbaum 94. 141 shipwreck (353-6) and for the devil's securing of Balaam's soul in a "shower" of "Cent, per Cent" (369-75). Pope also alludes to the famous sale of Pitt's Diamond at an exponential increase upon its purchase price63 to emphasize the vanity of Balaam's charity, the "sudden scruple" which influences Balaam to give "double" at church to make up for his previous sins (361-8). This vain charity compares unfavourably to the
Man of Ross's donation of weekly alms and food. And the possession of Sir Balaam by the devil, the "show'r" of wealth by which the Devil comes to inhabit Balaam and invest him with "spirit," underscores the self-possession or independent vision of the Man of
Ross (372-5). Indeed, the "tale" of Sir Balaam is a "tale" or a fiction in that Pope makes the devil appear as if a spirit separate from the villain himself so as to underscore
Balaam's hideous and wilful resignation of his imagination to a dim internal view (338).
With Sir Balaam, Pope considers resignation or demonic possession not as a hapless fate in which one's spirit is overtaken by another, one's empty shell filled with coin with little or no consciousness on the part of the subject, but as a willing disavowal of one's own imagination and sense. Earl Wasserman draws attention to Balaam's role as an "anti-Job."64 For, at the close of the narrative, and at the close of the poem as a whole, Balaam "curses God and dies" (402). Thus, Balaam appears not a Job, a man of faith who chooses to receive "good" at the hand of God along with "evil,"65 but the kind of resigned figure who listens to his wife's urging to "curse God, and die."66 For Pope, to
"deny the existence of a moral universe,"67 as Leranbaum accounts for Balaam's cursing, is to choose to behave viciously. Pope closes his poem with a portrait of a man who, like
63SeeESP119n361-4. 64 Wasserman 50 (in 44-55). 65 Job 2.10. 66 Job 2.9. 67 Leranbaum 97. 142 the wizard before him, but in a far more conscious and strident manner, chooses not to receive the evil with the good, but to blame God for his own decline, indeed for his own resignation to a life of sin and dissipation. This, indeed, is a failure to envision the reconciliation of extremes both in the natural world, among men, and within the self.
And, as such, Pope condemns Sir Balaam's failure of self-possession.
That the "Epistle to Burlington" reads as a "companion poem" to the "Epistle to
Bathurst," as Miriam Leranbaum suggests, is most evident in the manner in which Pope sustains his criticism of the possessed. Between his description of "Sir Balaam" at the close of the "Epistle to Bathurst" and his confirmation that "Good Sense" requires self- possession in the "Epistle to Burlington" (39-78), Pope treats the "possession" of figures of avarice and bad taste so as to identify the need for and to underscore the self- possession of Bathurst, Kyrle, and Burlington. Pope presents the vicious man's resignation of his own sense to the service of a devil or demon, and, furthermore, his poor imagination of that demon. Yet, as Pope suggests throughout the sequence, the apparent resignation of men to demons proves a wilful malevolence. And thus, the figures of bad taste in the "Epistle to Burlington" do not entirely present the "moral vacuity" Edwards associates with them.69 For Pope's emphasis upon treating vice as distorted virtue only appears to sharpen his criticism of self-love and good-nature taken to extremes. And Pope underscores these tragic offences to virtue and to heaven by considering their effects upon the landscape, referring, again, to the dynamism and response of nature to humankind, but revealing distortion and disorder as opposed to beauty and use.
Leranbaum 125. Edwards 60. 143
Pope's profligates in "Burlington" depend upon the opinions of hired experts:
"Not for himself he sees, or hears, or eats; / Artists must choose his Pictures, Music,
Meats" (4-5). And Pope swiftly comes to consider this lack of taste a kind of spiritual possession. To Visto, "Some Daemon whisper'd, 'Visto have a Taste,' / Heav'n visits with a Taste the wealthy fool," and Visto becomes the slave of "Ripley with a Rule" (16-18),
Walpole's "insufficient protege."70 Likewise, "Bubo" is sent "such a Guide" by "sportive
Fate" (19-20). "With great economy," argues Julian Ferraro, "Pope shows how moral
"71 values are sacrificed in the face of aesthetic judgments." Rich men become the victims of "demons," those multitudes of bad landscape designers and untalented architects who, nonetheless, consider themselves professionals.
As with Balaam, however, Pope suggests that men of no taste consciously resign themselves to the will of others. Moreover, the rich man's dependence upon others to choose things for him requires that he choose, hire and pay his equally tasteless professional. When Pope suggests that "Heav'n" visits "Visto" with a "taste" in the form of Ripley, he criticizes Visto's inability to identify his own taste or virtue (17-18). Even when Pope suggests that the rich man consults experts for the service of his loved ones, he underscores the excessive self-love associated with such mad, good-nature: "Think we all these are for himself? no more / Than his fine Wife, alas! or finer Whore." (11-12).
The tasteless man's efforts to please his wife "or finer whore" allude to the avaricious 79 man's consideration of another man's wife as his property in the "Epistle to Bathurst," and, moreover, to Pope's implication that Balaam, as the anti-Job, has taken the advice of
Job's wife and cursed God. Thus, Pope emphasizes the "Luxury" and "Lust" of the 70ESP133-4nl8. 71 Julian Ferraro, "Taste and Use" 144. 72 "Bathurst" 26-8. 144 possessed in the final poem. Again, possession by another, Pope suggests, occurs wilfully and results from vanity. And, since Pope suggests that vice is perverted virtue, the crimes of these figures appear more heinous.
By envisioning the ways in which Burlington's Palladian plans, whose
-7 0 publication provided the occasion for the poem, might be abused by others, Pope also teaches that the enslavement of oneself to another might result from the improper imagination of the genius or sense of that expert or gifted person:
You show us, Rome was glorious, not profuse,
And pompous buildings once were things of Use.
Yet shall (my Lord) your just, your noble rules
Fill half the land with Imitating Fools;
Who random drawings from your sheets shall take,
And of one beauty many blunders make; (23-8)
Burlington reveals the "Use" of "pompous buildings," the "glory" as opposed to the
"profusion" of Roman architecture (23-4). Burlington is able to restore the "glory" of the
Palladian plans without resigning his own spirit (23). Yet the "nobility" of Burlington's rules might easily be turned, by others, to "blunders" (25, 28). Julian Ferraro suggests that Pope's tone transforms from "commiseration" with Burlington in earlier editions of the poem to Burlington's '"being warned of the potentially disastrous outcome of his dissemination of the Palladian ideal."74 Still, with his sharp tone, Pope continues to confirm the integrity and originality of Burlington's project while suggesting that only
"Note on the Text," ESP 124. Ferraro, "Taste and Use" 146. "slavish copying" or, on the contrary, random drawing and consideration of the plans as
"mere pattern[s]"76 lead to "blunders" (28). Moreover, by presenting Burlington as an exemplary model whose work becomes distorted by others, Pope emphasizes, rather ironically, that the "fool" can make the genius appear a demon (26). While it is not foolish to consult a "Burlington," as opposed to an insufficient Ripley, it remains foolish to live by his "rules" (25). Thus, the "Fool" not only fails to imagine and cultivate his own virtue, he also imagines and responds poorly to the genius of the true artist or expert
(26).
Thus, while the dynamism of those who misinterpret Burlington's plans compares to the creative power of the Man of Ross, their efforts result in distortion:
Load some vain Church with old Theatric state,
Turn Arcs of triumph to a Garden-gate;
Reverse your Ornaments, and hang them all
On some patch'd dog-hole ek'd with ends of wall,
Then clap four slices of Pilaster on't,
That, lac'd with bits of rustic, makes a Front;
Or call the winds thro' long Arcades to roar,
Proud to catch cold at a Venetian door;
Conscious they act a true Palladian part,
And, if they starve, they starve by rules of art. (29-38)
Pope envisions the construction of an entranceway to a building, a grotesque and
"patch'd" front. Erroneously treating "ornaments as if they were the building blocks of
75 Edwards 66. 76 William A. Gibson, "Three Principles of Renaissance Architectural Theory in Pope's 'Epistle to Burlington,'" SEL 11 (1971)435-6. 146 architecture,"77 Burlington's imitators "hang" ornaments, "turn" "Arcs" into "gates," and
"call the winds" not with the grace and ease of the Man of Ross but with the "pride" and
"consciousness" he lacked (30-7). Likewise, the cold and hunger instigated by and brought upon those who "call the winds thro' long Arcades to roar" proves the opposite of the health and shade created by Kyrle for the relief of his people (35). In this case, poverty and labour do not appear at all. As with the fancied "slavery" of the rich to the
"mines" in the "Epistle to Bathurst," Pope emphasizes the metaphorical hunger, starvation, and the lack of taste in the fools themselves. Yet, ironically, here, the vicious figures appear within the landscapes they deform. Thus, Pope stresses the "responsibility
-JO felt for an ideal which is threatened by fools and knaves." Pope confirms not only the necessity of "Use" in building and planting, as exemplified in the work of the Man of
Ross and in Burlington's plans, but also the necessity of self-"rule" in one's endeavours
(24, 25, 38).
To confirm the need for self-possession in one's imitation of heaven, Pope presents his theory of "Good Sense" as the identification of a "Light" within:
Good Sense, which only is the gift of Heav'n,
And tho' no science, fairly worth the seven:
A Light, which in yourself you must perceive;
Jones and Le Notre have it not to give. (43-6)
First, to say that "Sense" is a "gift," is to say that "Sense" is a positive attribute endowed or given to "you" by a benevolent heaven (43). Pope's reference to the gift or endowment of "Light" which one must perceive in oneself (45) recalls his description of the ruling
77 Gibson 435-6. 78 Paul Alpers, "Pope's 'To Bathurst' and the Mandevillian State," ELH 25.1 (March 1958) 38. 147 passion as a heaven-endowed characteristic in the "Epistle to Bathurst" and the endowment of the lady with "Sense" in the "Epistle to a Lady." As Wallace Jackson argues, it is an "intuitive faculty consistent with the nature of self-love." Secondly,
Pope suggests that "Good Sense" is a "gift" or positive characteristic of "Heav'n" (43).
Thus, the identification of "Light" in the self is the imagination of one's own heavenly attribute (45). Pope intimates that one must think of oneself in relation to the divine. This is less a consideration of the self as God (though Pope considers the light to be a light
"within") than an allusion to John 1.7-9, in which John considers himself not as the
"light" of God himself, but as a "witness of that Light" which is the "true Light, which lightest every man that cometh into the world."
Even here, Pope suggests that the individual's light must be considered in some distinction to that of others. Pope considers "Good Sense" "no science" but "fairly worth the seven" (43-4). Thus, Pope champions the role of the imagination in revealing or establishing "truth" as equal if not superior to "those disciplines that depended on the accumulation of knowledge for their progress." Additionally, Pope suggests that the individual must maintain a humble yet clear "Sense" of the virtues of the self in some distinction to the genius one attributes to others. Samuel Johnson cited these lines on
"Good Sense" when defining "sense" as "Understanding, soundness of faculties: strength of natural reason." Such soundness of mind does not disallow an alliance of "sense" and imagination. Rather, Pope wishes to meet imagination with "soundness of faculties" and "reason." One imagines and cultivates one's "Light" via "perception," and the
79 Jackson 112. 80 Stefanie Lethbridge, Defence 33ff. 81 "Sense," DEL: "5. Understanding; soundness of faculties; strength of natural reason" (also cit. in Jackson 112). imagination of this "Light' not only requires a sound mind, it requires consciousness of one's own distinctiveness (45). One might perceive such "Light" in "Jones" or "Le
Notre." However, Pope confirms, they "have it not to give" (46).
Pope's inclusion of the proper treatment of "Nature" in his theory of "Good
Sense" confirms that he wishes to teach the imagination of virtue not only in the self and in other men but also in the landscape. One must remember or "consult" "Nature" in one's endeavours in building and planting:
To build, to plant, whatever you intend,
To rear the Column, or the Arch to bend,
To swell the Terras, or to sink the Grot;
In all, let Nature never be forgot. (47-50)
Pope's language of "swelling" and "sinking" recalls the grotesque creations of those who misinterpret Burlington's plans. Thus, Pope confirms that in addition to their failure of self-possession in consulting (and misinterpreting) experts, his fools have failed to consult nature properly in their projects. Here, however, Pope sees the promise of
"swelling" and "sinking" in the creation of terrace and grotto (49-50). Pope's emphasis upon memory, too, confirms the "glory" of Burlington's attempt to honour the Romans for their "use" as opposed to their "profusion" (23-4). And thus, Pope confirms that
Burlington, like the Man of Ross, considers "Nature" in his work (50). Still, as with his treatment of one's own good sense in relation to the experts, Pope teaches that maintaining one's "Good-nature" towards "Nature" requires self-possession.
Pope's final treatment of the "high Life" theme in the sequence confirms the importance of such self-possession: 149
But treat the Goddess like a modest fair,
Nor over-dress, nor leave her wholly bare;
Let not each beauty ev'ry where be spy'd,
Where half the skill is decently to hide.
He gains all points, who pleasingly confounds,
Surprizes, varies, and conceals the Bounds. (51-6)
While, in the previous poems, Pope found it difficult to find a model or nude to properly represent beauty or truth, Pope finds "Nature" the perfect "Goddess" to draw (51).
However, Pope emphasizes the difficult art of "treating" the "Goddess" (51). The task, here, is to temper, change, or transform nature so as to emphasize its virtue. This is not confusing crepe and lawn, or heaping gems upon a tawdry subject. Rather, it is an attempt to draw attention to and to cultivate the virtue inherent within the subject. Conveying his own theories of landscape gardening in the promotion of surprise and concealment of
"Bounds,"82 Pope requires of the gardener and builder the very difficult art of neither over- or under-dressing the subject (56).83 "Nature is a demanding norm" as Spacks claims. And Pope emphasizes this difficulty by representing nature as a goddess. In so doing, Pope not only teaches the necessity of imagining the worthy subject as divine, he suggests that one must treat this subject with one's own taste so as to emphasize its divinity.
For Pope's theories of the garden, see Mack; Morris; Peter E. Martin, "The Garden and Pope's Vision of Order in the 'Epistle to Burlington,'" Durham University Journal 34 (1973): 248-59. 83 This compares with Thomson's "Summer" 1300-20ff. See Chapter Four. 84 Patricia M. Spacks, "Pope's Satiric Use of Nature," Studies in the Literary Imagination 5.2 (1972) 50. 150
Furthermore, when Pope discusses the necessity of imagining and consulting the
"Genius" of the natural world as a means of employing one's "good sense," he appears to confirm the subjectivity of the individual imagination:
Consult the Genius of the Place in all;
That tells the Waters or to rise, or fall,
Or helps th'ambitious Hill the heav'ns to scale,
Or scoops in circling theatres the Vale,
Calls in the Country, catches opening glades,
Joins willing woods, and varies shades from shades,
Now breaks, or now directs, th'intending Lines;
Paints as you plant, and as you work, designs. (57-64)
With his comparison of the genius of nature and the genius of his virtuous men, Pope begins to imply that to see the genius in nature remains an act of the individual imagination, and, as such, it remains subjective. Imagining the "Genius" of the place compares to imagining one's "Light" (57, 45). As Leranbaum argues, while "Good
Sense, the 'gift of heav'n', is the Light of the soul of Man, so the goddess nature, the
'Genius of the Place', is the divine centre of the natural world."85 And, here, Pope recalls the power of the Man of Ross in animating the natural world by considering the animism of nature, a "Genius" which "joins willing woods" as Kyrle hung his (62). Also, Pope refers to the "Lines" and "designs" of "Nature" to complement Burlington's own drawing and design, his restoration of the glories of old Rome (63-4). Indeed, while nature, here, appears a co-creator whose "Genius" is comparable to that of Pope's virtuous characters,
Pope begins to suggest that one's imagination of the "Genius" of others and of nature
Leranbaum 133 (also qtd. in Jackson, 113). 151 remains subjective (57). However, by maintaining the individual's alliance with and imitation of "Heav'n," Pope suggests that the individual remains "guided by more effective powers than merely subjective ones."
Wishing to avoid, thus, the erroneous resignation of will which might follow upon the recognition of one's subjectivity (the crisis aroused by the contemplation of the self- in-consciousness Pope treats in the "Epistle to Cobham"), Pope teaches that one must consider one's virtue or light in distinction to the virtue one identifies in others and in nature:
Still follow Sense, of ev'ry Art the Soul,
Parts answ'ring parts shall slide into a whole,
Spontaneous beauties all around advance,
Start ev'n from Difficulty, strike from Chance,
Nature shall join you, Time shall make it grow
A work to wonder at - perhaps a STOW. (65-70)
Julian Ferraro observes that Pope's "Still follow Sense," constitutes an important revision to lines which read, "Begin with Sense, of every Art the Soul" in editions of the poem previous to 1744. Pope's revision confirms the distinction of "Sense" and the "Genius" of place (65, 57). The "Spontaneous" production of "beauty" and the "slid[ing]" of
"parts" "into a whole" only take place, he reveals, when one follows one's own "Sense" in distinction from the genius of other people and of the natural world (66-7). David B.
Morris argues:
Northrop Frye, The Double Vision 20. Ferraro, "Taste and Use" 149. Self-mastery and self-possession are what Pope proposes to replace the shifting
world of property, where lands and houses are no less variable than credit and
money. The sole point of fixity he contemplates is the centering of the individual
in virtue.88
Pope confirms that true beauty and spontaneity only arise after such individuality has been confirmed. Thereafter, even when borne of "Difficulty" or "Chance," "Good Sense" is joined by "Nature" (68). And the natural world, thus, moves "all around" the subject as if the subject stands still and does nothing at all (67). This recalls Pope's treatment of the self as prism in the "Epistle to Cobham," the substantial form through which light refracts. And this best describes the role of the Man of Ross as he hangs and parts the world around.
With his theory of "Good Sense," Pope confirms that Kyrle's artless efforts to plant and build and Burlington's attempts to restore Rome to its previous glory require self-possession. Pope also confirms his lady's self-possession, her ability to maintain her own sway while appearing to submit to her mate. In addition, Pope confirms the good sense of Cobham in his love of his country. That Pope offers Cobham's "STOW" as a model of the "wonder" created by such "Good Sense" might make Pope's lesson of
"Good Sense" appear ironic (70). The observation of "wonder" might be a wry or back handed aspersion of his friend's "Good Sense"89 in gardening, or even, perhaps, of the wondrous power of the Man of Ross. However, Pope tempers his consideration of
Cobham's "STOW" as a "wonder" by considering the propensity for Cobham to "float a
88 Morris 206-7. 89 Although Cobham's gardens were laid out by Charles Bridgeman, this does not make Cobham a "slave" to Bridgeman's rules. See ESP 137n47-98, 139n70, 140n74; Bridgeman, Switzer and Kent, "moved towards a satisfying synthesis of Beauty and Use, of Art and Nature" which appeared to suit Pope's own plans at Twickenham, Dixon 68. 153 lake"90 upon his grounds were he to lack such "Good Sense" (70-4). The production of
"wonder" in this context proves the effort of a sustained, benevolent imagination. Thus,
Pope attributes this mind of heaven to all of his addressees and to the Man of Ross.
The Prophecy and Imperative of the "Epistle to Burlington"
In the service of truth, Pope postpones meeting the prophecy of the wizard in the
"Epistle to Bathurst" with a prophecy of his own. However, Pope closes the "Epistle to
Burlington," and, hence, the sequence of poems known as the Epistles to Several Persons with both a vision and an imperative which exemplify his model of the right use of the imagination. After presenting his lengthy portrait of Timon's villa (99-172), whose inversion of "Nature" epitomizes the failure of the human imagination to promote use and beauty in the landscape (119), Pope presents a two-fold vision. First, Pope imagines the onslaught of a "golden age" of agriculture and commerce which buries Timon's villa and restores balance to the world (173-90). This prophecy, in turn, becomes the benevolent "motive" or motivating vision for Pope's address to Burlington and to his larger audience (191-204). Pope's motivation (his vision of another age) and his action
(his encouragement of his friend to create that age in the present) provide a final, stinging contrast to the wizard's prophecy of doom.
To complement his exemplification of the proper employment of imagination in the close of the sequence, Pope presents a portrait of the perverted imagination of Timon as manifested in Timon's villa. Geoffrey Tillotson argues that for Pope, "the world contained evil, and though, when one arranged one's thoughts, evil must be allowed to be part of the general rightness of the universe, it was hideous in its practical impact on
This "office" was attributed to "Bridgman" in 1731, ESP 140n74. 154 man." And Timon's efforts prove particularly hideous. With Timon, Pope offers an extensive critique of an improper relationship between one man and the natural world.
Indeed, it is the longest and the most obvious survey of the perversion of nature via improper imagination in the sequence. Thus, the portrait has already attracted scholarly attention, particularly in regard to Timon's aberration of the styles of gardening and architecture Pope most admired.92 Here, I will limit my analysis to two aspects of the portrait which make Pope's final vision more exuberant: Timon's failed self-possession, as underscored by Pope's reference to wind and rock, and Timon's "charitable vanity"
(172).
Pope presents Timon as a figure who, particularly in reference to the wind, appears neither self-possessed nor possessed by a demon. However, as Pope suggests of all of his vicious characters, a seeming lack of spirit entails a wilful and malevolent disregard of the virtue of oneself, of others, and of the natural world. Timon, like the figures of Villario and Sabinus before him,93 appears to have no Ripley who informs his grand scheme. Rather, his estate is the result of his own design. Yet, unlike Villario and
Sabinus, who create beautiful gardens, Timon creates nothing but "Brobdignag":
Greatness, with Timon, dwells in such a draught
As brings all Brobdignag before your thought.
To compass this, his building is a Town,
91 Geoffrey Tillotson, Pope and Human Nature (Toronto: Oxford UP, 1958) 53. 92 For example, James Aubrey, "Timon's Villa: Pope's Composite Picture," Studies in Philology 80.3 (Summer 1983) 325-348; Douglas Murray, "Timon's Villa Revisited," Approaches to Teaching Pope's Poetry (New York: MLA, 1993) 148-56; Mack. 93 In "Burlington" 79-98, Pope admires Villario's work but not his fickle destruction of that work, while the amiable woods of Sabinus are felled by his son's "fine Taste." 155
His pond an Ocean, his parterre a Down:
Who but must laugh, the Master when he sees,
A puny insect, shiv'ring at a breeze! (103-8)
This "stupendous air" applies both to the "Master" and to his estate, revealing wind and gas in the place of substantial matter (101, 107). Amidst this "draught," furthermore,
Timon appears a "puny insect, shiv'ring" at the breeze, a fool (103, 108). Pope also observes Timon's "improvement" of the "keenness of the Northern wind" via the positioning of "cupid" statues and a "lake" (111-12). Such emphasis upon the wind signals the perversion of Timon's imagination, his lack of taste. Still, as with his possessed men in the poem's opening, Pope emphasizes Timon's role as "Master," his willing perversion of the natural world. The association with wind recalls not only the imitating "Fools" of the poem but also the devil who conducts the winds in the portrait of
Sir Balaam. Timon does not lack self-possession or a sense of superiority. Rather, his imagination is "inverted" or employed for no good (119).
While Timon's portrait is comic in that Pope presents him as a fool and a "puny insect," it remains one of Pope's most scathing critiques of the perversion of the imagination (108). Since Pope has confirmed that one might consider vice as perverted virtue, Timon's crimes become more heinous. For Pope to suggest that Timon has
"inverted Nature" is to suggest a dark and malevolent design (119). And, particularly when one considers the geological imagery in the previous poems, Pope's description of
"the whole" as "a labour'd Quarry above ground," reads as a rather significant criticism of Timon's failure to employ his imagination in easing the care of heaven (110). Maynard
Mack observes that great house poets like Ben Jonson aspired to have the great house 156 appear as if "arisen, as it were, out of the earth it stands on." 4 Yet Timon's "whole" appears a visible horde, a house as if demolished, a pile of parts from an older home set aside to be incorporated into a structure of a new style, or an unfinished construction project like Blenheim, one of Pope's purported models for the villa.95 Thus, Pope renders
Timon's new building useless, the perversion of what used to stand in its place or a monstrosity already in need of re-arrangement. Likewise, Pope identifies the "inverted
Nature" of Timon's world (119). Vegetable and mineral become interchangeable: "Trees as thick as statues, statues thick as trees" (119). And the same inversion is evident within the "Quarry" (133-168). The Villa is full of "Wooden books," "quirks [sic] of Musick, broken and uneven" as the rocks outdoors, and a "Temple" of a dining room (138, 143,
156).
With Timon's "charitable vanity," Pope also mourns the improper employment of
Timon's imagination (172). Pope, having come to "curse" "a day so "ill"-spent, as
Spacks emphasizes, is in need of a salve (167-8).9 The concluding assessment of
Timon's "charitable vanity," however, does not provide the ample salve Pope requires:
Yet hence the Poor are cloath'd, the Hungry fed;
Health to himself, and to his Infants bread
The Lab'rer bears: What his hard Heart denies,
His charitable Vanity supplies. (169-72)
94 Mack, The Garden and the City 92. 95 Blenheim was still in the process of being built when Pope saw it in 1717. He described it to Blount as a "Heap of Towers" (CP 6 August 1718). See ESP 143nl09-10. 96 Spacks, "Pope's Satiric Use of Nature" 46. Howard Weinbrot suggests that "Timon's villa nonetheless provide[s] employment and thus family unification for the lower classes."97 Pope sees the good that comes from
Timon's "hardness" of "Heart," and he uses his own assessment of Timon's "charity" to revive his waning benevolence in the face of such error (171). Thus, Pope observes the
"public benefits" of "private vices" which are the subject of Mandeville's Fable of the
Bees. Yet, Pope and Mandeville's philosophies were quite distinctive.9 And, in view of the other instances of partial or failed generosity in the sequence, such "vanity" remains an offence. As Reuben Brower suggests, Pope appears "less certain that 'partial evils were universal good.'" And, since Pope has envisioned vice as perverted virtue, his critique of Timon, at last, remains fiery. Timon's "vanity" requires the aspersion of the virtue within himself and within others. To rally himself from his own "curs[ing]" of the day (167), Pope promptly "buries" Timon's estate, placing the quarry back in its proper place, the ground (175).
To conclude the epistle and the sequence as a whole, Pope trumps the wizard of the "Epistle to Bathurst" by delivering a prophecy of a future golden age. With a mind of heaven, he envisions a return to order rather than the onslaught of inevitable decline or the exchange or one vicious extreme for another:
Another age shall see the golden Ear
Imbrown the Slope, and nod on the Parterre,
Deep Harvests bury all his pride has plann'd
And laughing Ceres re-assume the land. (173-6)
97 Weinbrot 186. 98 Bernard Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees. 99 See Paul Alpers, "Pope's 'To Bathurst' and the Mandevillian State," ELH 25.1 (March 1958) 23-42; Wasserman 36-7n88. 100 Reuben Brower, Alexander Pope: The Poetry of Allusion 259. This passage was "repositioned" from an earlier part of the manuscript to follow the description of Timon in Pope's Works of 1735 and thereafter. This is an important re positioning, in that Pope sees Timon's estate itself "buried" by "deep harvests" and the
"golden Ear" (173-4)101 so that the house becomes "properly subsidiary to the uses of money and productive investment" as Raymond Williams suggests.102 And Pope's prophesied "burial" of Timon's villa and gardens contrasts the prophecy of the wizard in the previous epistle (175). Here, Pope presents no prophecy of doom, no shift from ostentation to degradation. This is a burial, but not a deluge. Pope presents a future "age" of reconciled extremes in which the poet sees "nature in man's works rather than in a received or fortunate paradise" (173).103 He foresees a return to balance and order, to seed and "Harvest," (175) the milder and more pleasant changes in the land which found duration in their change, as in the "truth" of the "Epistle to Bathurst."
Within the prophecy, Pope confirms the good "Sense" of Bathurst and Burlington
(177-80). As he sought to identify the Man of Ross in the landscape, Pope wonders, too, about the identities of those who "grace" and "improve" the "Soil:"
Who then shall grace, or who improve the Soil?
Who plants like Bathurst, or who builds like Boyle.
'Tis Use alone that sanctifies Expence,
And Splendour borrows all her rays from Sense.
His Father's Acres who enjoys in peace,
Or makes his Neighbours glad, if he encrease;
Whose cheerful Tenants bless their yearly toil,
101 See also Ferraro, "Taste and Use" 152. 102 Raymond Williams, The Country and the City (London: Chatto and Windus, 1973) 59. 103 The Country and the City 59. 159
Yet to their Lord owe more than to the soil;
Whose ample Lawns are not asham'd to feed
The milky heifer and deserving steed;
Whose rising Forests, not for pride or show,
But future Buildings, future Navies grow:
Let his plantations stretch from down to down,
First shade a Country, and then raise a Town. (177-90)
Pope does not find, in this future, Bathurst and Burlington (Richard Boyle) themselves.
Rather, complimenting his addressees, Pope considers them precursors of the entire "age" to come (173). Such future "Splendour" which "borrows all her rays from Sense" is already exemplified in their good "Sense" (180). Aubrey Williams emphasizes that
Pope's use of the words "grace" and "sanctifies" "declares how strongly that vision is coloured by Christian, religious values rather than by Aristotelian, secular ones."1 4 And
Pope pays homage to the heavenly mindset of his addressees.
Still, Pope proves that these future bastions are not slavish or poor imitators of
Burlington or Bathurst. Rather, like Pope's addressees, the people of the new age are self- possessed. Pope identifies such self-possession not only in the son who enjoys his
"Father's Acres" and their "encrease," but also in the son's "Tenants" (181-4). When
Pope suggests these tenants "owe more" to their "Lord" than to the "soil," he suggests that they respect not only their benevolent land-owners, of course, but their God (184).
Thus, in reference to his emphasis upon consulting one's heaven-endowed sense in some superiority to the genius of the land, Pope implies that even these tenants, who identify themselves with their "Lord," remain self-possessed (184). Particularly when one
104 Aubrey Williams, "A Hell for 'Ears Polite': Pope's 'Epistle to Burlington,'" ELH 51.3 (Fall 1984) 499. considers that Pope, barred by the laws which denied possession of land to Roman
Catholics, was a renter of property, this power of imagination proves essential to the sustenance and increase of the virtues of the new age. And it contrasts Balaam's scorn of
God at the close of the previous epistle.
Indeed, Pope's vision of the future proves not static but progressive, a future of
"encrease" (182). Still, this vision tempts but does not extend to an unmanageable extreme. By suggesting that the land and the people within it are the means of producing
"future Buildings, future Navies," Pope reveals the potential for error, for the excessive support of national interest with which Cotta's son drained his family seat (188).
However, Pope emphasizes that one must first "shade a Country" before one "raise[s] a
Town" (188-190). He stresses the necessity of creating and sustaining a relationship between country and city, which, in turn, will make for a healthy nation. As Raymond
Williams emphasizes, Pope lauds "prudent productive investment, tempered by reasonable charity."105 Pope's focus, here, remains upon the people and upon their imagination of the divinity in the land and in others without the compromise of their own self-worth. This bold imagination, in turn, properly benefits the land. And thus, Pope's bravado about the progress of an already-virtuous age remains temperate.
Trumping those figures of avarice in the "Epistle to Bathurst" who are motivated by visions of decay and decline, Pope prefaces his imperative for Burlington with a vision of future reconciliation, a vision of harmony and progress. Furthermore, Pope's imperative, his address to Burlington, reveals his optimism for progress in his own age:
You too proceed! make falling Arts your care,
Erect new wonders, and the old repair,
105 The Country and the City 58. Jones and Palladio to themselves restore,
And be whate'er Vitruvius was before:
Till Kings call forth th'Ideas of your mind,
Proud to accomplish what such hands design'd,
Bid Harbours open, public Ways extend,
Bid Temples, worthier of the God, ascend;
Bid the broad Arch the dang'rous Flood contain,
The Mole projected break the roaring Main;
Back to his bounds their subject Sea command,
And roll obedient Rivers thro' the Land;
These Honours, Peace to happy Britain brings,
These are Imperial Works, and worthy Kings. (191-204)
Julian Ferraro suggests that the lines "You too proceed" (191) prove Pope's address to
Burlington "a parallel rather than a determining activity," such that "the resultant tone is almost one of consolation."1 Indeed, Pope presents Burlington's activities in a
"parallel" manner by first confirming and then expanding upon the virtue of his subject.
As with his confirmation of the use which sanctifies the expense of the golden age, Pope confirms the good sense of Burlington's projects, his restoration of the Palladian plans and his own building and planting on his estate. And, as with his desire for "encrease" in the preceding prophecy, Pope desires the cultivation or expansion of Burlington's projects (182). He would like to see Burlington's "Ideas" applied to the national landscape so as to benefit the nation (195). Pope's desire for Burlington's aid of the nation appears more expansive than his previous prophecy of "encrease" on the
106 Ferraro, "Taste and Use" 154. 162 countryside (182). Pope considers the "Peace" Burlington's direction of waterways and erection of buildings might bring "happy Britain" (203). Thus, he sees the local work of the Man of Ross and of the men of that prophesied future age drawn out upon a national or international scale. Still, by placing this imperative for immediate transformation directly after his prophecy of a future golden age, Pope considers the "Ideas" of
Burlington's "mind" to be the potential "determining activities" which will set that age in motion (195).
Pope identifies and lauds Burlington's self-possession by expressing a desire for
"Kings" to "call forth" the "Ideas" of "your mind" (195). T. G. A. Nelson suggests that
Pope, whom he thinks remains skeptical of Burlington's Palladian projects, "seeks to woo
Burlington away from Whiggish individualism and toward works that will benefit the
i r\n whole population of Britain." Indeed, Pope wishes to consider the expansive manner in which the nation might benefit from Burlington's ideas. However, Pope appears to support Burlington's individualism, or, at least, his self-possession. Not only has Pope revealed, via his theory of "Good Sense," that Burlington has already sustained his own ideas in his representation of the Palladian plans, he wishes Burlington's ideas to be brought forth and expanded.
That kings "call forth" the "Ideas" of his "mind," might suggest that the "King" himself risks becoming a slave to Burlington's rules (195). Deutsch argues that
"Burlington's 'Ideas,' in the perfection of their invisible form, supersede even the commands of the monarchs who 'accomplish' them by ordering their construction."108
And indeed, Pope cannily intimates that Burlington might become the kind of expert to 107 T. G. A. Williams, "Pope, Burlington, Architecture, and Politics: A Speculative Revisionist View," Eighteenth Century Life 21.1 (1997) 59. 108 Helen Deutsch, Resemblance and Disgrace 97. 163 whom even kings resign themselves. However, to identify the divinity in another, and to call it forth so as to promote the expansion of that vision while remaining self-possessed
(which is what Pope, himself, is doing) is to imitate heaven. And Pope suggests that in such good faith or practice, the King will enable Burlington to produce results "worthy" of "Kings" (204).
Perhaps there yet remains a wry tone to the poem's conclusion, perhaps, a tone of
"consolation." Philip Ayers considers the nationalism of the close of the poem "wry and wistful, shot through with ironies and the knowledge that the new Britannia Romana is going to be slow in the making."10 Indeed, it is as much up to the King to enable
Burlington to make his ideas expand to fulfill the nation as it remains up to Burlington to sustain and to increase his own benevolence of mind. Yet such steadiness complements
Pope's model of radical benevolence as a bold, sustained task of imagination. While Pope is not so zealous as to present this near-future as more than an "intellectual possibility,"110 Pope sees the potential for Burlington's "Imperial Works" to be the virtuous actions which both stem from and set in motion a vision of benevolence and harmony in and between humankind and nature (204). Pope, as Spacks argues, reveals that he "believes in the possibility of great action which enlarges the dominion of value."111
Thus, at the close of the poem and of the sequence, Pope teaches the proper employment of the imagination in respect to man and nature, the imitation of the benevolence and harmonizing power of "Heav'n" in one's mind. Pope identifies, in
Burlington, the self-possessed imagination capable of reviving the use of the past and of
109 Philip Ayres, "Pope's Epistle to Burlington: The Vitruvian Analogies" SEL 30.3 (Summer 1990) 441. 110 Edwards 71. 111 Spacks 51. 164 encouraging this use in the present so as to set in motion an age of healthy "encrease"
(182). And, in so doing, Pope reveals that both his own motives and his own actions are benevolent. Trumping the wizard with his own sagacity, Pope presents a bright vision of a future age which proves the basis for his own virtuous action, his drawing out the virtue of a friend with an imperative in verse. IV. "THAT SPARK THE TEMPEST WAK'D": THE IMPULSES OF "SUMMER," 1104-1370
Characterizing James Thomson's early and wide-spread popularity as the
"wonder" which arises as the "natural product of ignorance," William Wordsworth argued that "in any well-used Copy of the Seasons the Book generally opens of itself
1 0 with the rhapsody on love, or with one of the stories, (perhaps Damon and Musidora)."
Wordsworth's parentheses emphasize and, hence, call into question the popularity of the nude bathing scene in Thomson's "Summer." In the most physically revealing moment of The Seasons. Musidora's "parting Robe" exposes "th' alternate Breast," and one must wonder, momentarily, whether it is Musidora, the peeping Damon, or both whom
Thomson deems the "Youth wild-throbbing" (1311-12).3 It is little wonder, then, that for
Wordsworth, who was "acutely conscious of the limited public appeal"4 of his own work,
The Seasons opened to that place in which Thomson attempts a distinction between the
"Prudes in Virtue" (1298-9) and those whose "Love" borders on the "Profane" (1334-6).
Anxious to legitimize Thomson's popularity, however, the poet and critic John Wilson recommended Thomson's "great shows of nature," arguing that, like Wordsworth
'"Spring" 1113-76. 2 William Wordsworth, The Prose Works of William Wordsworth, Ed. W. J. B. Owen and Jane Worthington Smyser, 3 vols (Oxford UP, 1974) III, 74 [qtd. in John Strachan, '"That is True Fame': A Few Words about Thomson's Romantic Period Popularity," James Thomson: Essays for the Tercentenary, Ed. Richard Terry (Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 2000) 257]. 3 James Grantham Turner, '"Illustrious Depravity' and the Erotic Sublime," The Age of Johnson 2 (1989): 26. 4 Richard Terry ed., Introduction, "Thomson's 'Fame'," James Thomson: Essays for the Tercentenary 11.
165 166 himself, Thomson's contemporaries remembered and admired "the heavens and the earth" in The Seasons.5
The appeal of Thomson's human dramas derives from his rendering of the natural world. When read in the context of the sequence in which they appear (1104-1370), a sequence which begins, notably, with one of Thomson's "great shows of nature," a thunderstorm, the "love stories" in "Summer" are more, not less, sexually suggestive and morally instructive than when considered in isolation. The sequence consists of four scenes. First, Thomson makes the convulsion of "the heavens and the earth" his subject, describing a violent thunderstorm (1104-68). Second, in the story of Amelia and Celadon,
Thomson reprises the storm in the minds and bodies of two lovers who have an "instant" sense of their impending doom, a fancied "Fate" confirmed by Amelia's death by lightning (1169-1222). Then, Thomson licenses observation of the "body's purity" by discussing the dangers and delights of swimming, considering the joys of a youthful male swimmer and, briefly, his own "weak-trembling" on the brink of a pool (1223-68).
Finally, Thomson presents Damon's spying on Musidora's bath and her relief in discovering Damon's "Hand" in the letter of confession dropped beside the water (1269-
1370). Over the course of the sequence, Thomson, like Pope in the Epistles to Several
Persons, compares human behaviour to the dynamism of the natural world to teach the proper employment of the imagination. He espouses the identification and cultivation of
"Love" as a virtuous, motivating force. And he considers the ways in which this "Love" must be cultivated not only within the individual, but also sympathetically, among a well- matched pair.
5 [John Wilson] The Recreations of Christopher North. 3 vols (Edinburgh & London, 1842) III, 250-1 (qtd. in Strachan 258). For an account of this debate, see Strachan 248-59. Throughout the sequence, which I will read at length, here, Thomson delineates human "sentiments" as defined by Jean Hagstrum and Erik Eramesta, albeit in reference to the word's usage later in the century: "Between 1755 and 1765" sentiment "described condition in which reason and feeling are both present, now one, and now the other predominating." Thomson continually captures in his gaze a series of convulsions in which his subjects waver from sudden bursts of fancy or feeling (and the two are oftentimes indivisible), often accompanied by a sudden freezing of the body, or, "frozen agency," to modes of more elaborate imagination, feeling, reasoning, and physical exertion. And, with each scene, Thomson's gaze upon the human form becomes more detailed both in terms of the range of fancies or feelings from which his subjects choose to respond and in his depiction of the physical body. This increased attention to detail also signifies an attempt to return to the dynamism of the thunderstorm itself, the first series of convulsions depicted in the sequence. Thus, throughout the sequence, Thomson compares human sentiments to the behaviour of the natural world, particularly the violence in nature, "that Spark the Tempest wak'd" (1241).
If, as a result of his emphasis on the dangers and the delights associated with observing both the natural world and the human body, Thomson's depiction of human behaviour becomes increasing sensual, verging upon the "scandalous realm of
o pornography," it is also morally instructive. Without the return of an equally virtuous partner, the passion of the observer might lead to error. Drawing attention to the shared
6 Jean Hagstrum, Sex and Sensibility 7 [summarizing Erik Erametsa, A Study of the Word "Sentimental" and of other Linguistic Characteristics of Eighteenth Century Sentimentalism in England. Ser. B, 74.1, Annales Academiae Scientiarium Fennicae (Helsinki, 1951) esp. 18-54]. 7 "The transformation of an agent into a fixed image," Shaun Irlam, Elations 150 [Irlam borrows from Angus Fletcher, Allegory (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1964)]. Commentators on the "statuesque" include A.D. McKillop, The Background of Thomson's Seasons 70-1; Jean Hagstrum, The Sister Arts 244-50. 8 Turner 26. 168 diction and plot elements of the two "love stories," Stefanie Lethbridge argues that
Thomson teaches the control of the passions, or virtuous restraint, by evoking reader emotion or affect.9 Referring to John Dennis' Grounds of Criticism in Poetry (1704),
Lethbridge hypothesizes that Thomson hopes to "leave 'traces' for the future use of the animal spirits in the brain and in this fashion habituate reader response to virtuous conduct."10 Particularly when considered in terms of Thomson's discussion of natural violence, however, Thomson's sequence advocates the employment of the imagination in identifying one's motives, in associating those motives with one's potential for moral excellence, and in cultivating virtuous behaviour via exercise, action, control and restraint, but also via pleasure-seeking, abandon, and "frolic Fancy."11
Thus, Thomson's sequence in "Summer" resembles Pope's four Epistles to
Several Persons. Both poets compare natural phenomena and human behaviour to identify impulse or motive, and to associate that impulse with one's potential moral excellence, that "Light, which in yourself you must perceive" and which remains the "gift
10 of Heav'n." In this sequence, Thomson is chiefly interested in the impulses associated with "Love." And "Love," in its highest form, or best sense, requires not only imagination, but the shared or responsive imagination of a well-matched pair engaged in the cultivation of that "Spark" within.
9 Stefanie Lethbridge, Defence 133-154. 10 Defence 154. 11 "Winter" 611. See Chapter Five. 12 "Burlington" 43-5. 169
1104-1168: The "Touch Etherial" in Nature and in Man
Thomson's lesson of imagining and cultivating one's virtuous passion begins with an emphasis on violence in nature and in humankind. The summer thunderstorm (1104-
68) is the first in a series of four passages in which Thomson renders the natural world or the human mind and body in a state of convulsion and, simultaneously, calls attention to the dangers associated with this phenomenon. Jean Hagstrum suggested that the "ideal" is
"closely related to the modern psychoanalytical insight that in its highest condition love remembers its origins in sexual earth." Thomson relates "high love" to its origins in
"sexual earth" first by delineating his thunderstorm and then by remembering the "Touch etherial" and its ensuing violence in the sentiments of his human characters (1113). While the thunderstorm prefigures human behaviour in the three scenes that follow, Thomson also treats human passions within the storm scene, beginning and concluding his description of the storm's climax with a brief glimpse of "Man's" swift responses to environmental change (1125). With his storm more sublime for the danger in which it places "Man" and for the animal sacrifice it requires, Thomson calls attention to the commonality between the storm's violence and the sentiments of "Man."
With the thunderstorm, Thomson presents an extensive and sensual display of natural violence to which he compares human behaviour. If, in the opening strides of the
"Epistle to Cobham," Pope presents an array of natural phenomena to describe the difficulty of identifying the ruling passion,14 Thomson, in "Summer," presents thunder and lightning not as isolated occurrences but as a series of wide-ranging convulsions drawn from seemingly limitless reserves whose source, likewise, is scarcely identifiable.
13 Hagsrum, Sex and Sensibility 4. 14 "Cobham" 15-50. Throughout the sequence, and in order to espouse the employment of the imagination in identifying and cultivating a virtuous passion, Thomson returns to and reprises the sudden "Touch" of gases with which the thunderstorm begins (1113). Earlier in "Summer," as James Sambrook confirms, the "minerals [...] confirmed by their light the sun's mighty power"15 (140-159). Yet Thomson, like Pope, uses his references to underground gems both to prompt delight in the order in creation and in a person's good sense, and to prompt wonder or dismay in the face of human error. And, at the outset of the storm, Thomson's focus appears to be upon the latter, for a "wrathful Vapour" is
"drawn" from the minerals' "Beds" deep below the earth's surface, and it rises to
"Pollute the Sky" (1106-7, 1111). A. D. McKillop observes that
ancient meteorology had connected the 'seeds of fire' in clouds with vapors or
dry exhalation from the earth. Then the collision of clouds and conflict of winds
produced thunder and lightning. Modern science added the analogy with the
explosion of gunpowder.16
And Thomson concentrates on the volatile character of the gems' inmate gases. These are dangerous and "wrathful" gases that require only a "Touch etherial" to set the storm in motion (1106, 1113).
Thus, Thomson renders the "Touch" as a mysterious impulse which brings forth expansive action, energy and violence (1113). And, along with the mysterious quality of the gases, themselves, Thomson wonders about the derivation or character of that
"Touch," the spark or motion which sets off this "Magazine" and launches the "Dash of
Clouds, or irritating War / Of fighting Winds" (1112, 1114-15). Indeed, it is difficult to
15 Ralph Cohen, The Unfolding of the Seasons 156 (in ref. to "Summer" 134). See also Blanford Parker, The Triumph of Augustan Poetics (New York: Cambridge UP, 1998) 145 16 McKillop 69. 171 pinpoint the source or the relative virtue of this "Touch etherial" (1113). By the 1744 edition, as Sambrook notes, Thomson's "Touch" appears not the work of God or
1 7
Providence but of the mysterious "ether" itself (1113-15). Yet Thomson leaves ambiguous the virtue of the "Touch" so as to question the virtue of the impulsive and instant fancies of the people he describes thereafter.
To emphasize his interest in human motive, Thomson presents the storm's climax as a series of convulsions, emanations of light and sound which resemble human behaviour:
The Thunder raises his tremendous Voice.
At first, heard solemn o'er the Verge of Heaven,
The Tempest growls; but as it nearer comes,
And rolls its awful Burden on the Wind,
The Lightnings flash a larger Curve, and more
The Noise astounds: till over Head a Sheet
Of livid Flame disclosed wide, then shuts
And opens wider, shuts and opens still
Expansive, wrapping Ether in a Blaze.
Follows the loosen'd aggravated Roar,
Enlarging, deepening, mingling, Peal on Peal
Crush'd horrible, convulsing Heaven and Earth. (1132-43)
The thunder, personified as a male of "tremendous Voice," unleashes his "awful Burden" on the "Wind," yet his burden is not lifted (1132, 1135). And Thomson expands a "Sheet
/ of livid Flame" which "shuts / and opens" across the scene, matching "The Lightnings'" 17 See also SEA 342nl092-1116. 172 visual effects with equal shocks of thunder (1136-9). Ralph Cohen argues that the
"remarkable quality" of the passage is shown in Thomson's "combination of internal allusions, of sound and sight" and its "shuttling between personification and natural description."18 Thomson's lightning is loosely personified, as he presents its appearance in the sky as an eye (or any one of several other human features) opening or "disclosing wide" and "shut[ting]" (1138). He describes the storm as if it were the receiving orifice of an astounded subject, "shutting]" only to open "wider still" (1139). The "loosen'd" yet
"aggravated Roar" of the returning thunder brings additional sexual tension, shuttling between abandon and agitation, its "burden" never fully eased (1141, 1135). And the thunder's "convulsing Heaven and Earth" emphasizes the physicality of the phenomenon
(1143). Notably, Thomson does not offer such a realistic or sensual view of the action of the human figures in his landscape until he describes Musidora's flitting body and
Damon's aroused response.
The mastery of Thomson's description, too, is its "unquench'd" (1146) and
"unconquerable" (1147) continuation to the edges of perspective, making the storm an example of "erotic naturalism," or, a sensual or sexual description of nature which includes personification.19 If the storm might be said to root from a secret location beneath the earth, the storm, though "Ragged," remains "fierce" in its removal from the scene (1148). Perhaps in the manner of Pliny, who describes hail soon after his discussion of lightning in the Natural History, Thomson follows his storm with a
18 Cohen 156. 19 Turner 24. Turner employs the phrase, briefly, to characterize Thomson's address to the "British Fair" in "Spring" 963-982, as "a seduction" in its "sudden lurch from erotic naturalism to moral didacticism." 20 Pliny [the elder], Natural History. Vol. I, Books I-II, Trans. H. Rackham, Loeb (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1938) Book II, XLIX - LXIl; McKillop considers Thomson's (indirect) employment of Pliny, McKillop 134, 163 (also 65n,69n, 132). 173
"Deluge of sonorous Hail" (1144) come to "Pour a whole Flood" (1146) over the local soil. This new storm provides little relief from the thunder and lightning. Moreover,
Thomson observes that the storm continues to "struggle thro'" to the edges of the scene, appearing "in red whirling Balls" which invest the far-off "Mountains with redoubled
Rage" (1147-89). Thomson's rendering of ball-lightning, "the mobile luminous spheres which have been observed during thunderstorms" and which have a long lifetime "of a few seconds," shows that the storm, indeed, does not die down as it travels. Likewise,
Thomson remarks upon the lightning's last visible strides dissolving the "wintry load" of
"Snowdon," blazing "Cheviout" and "Thule" (1161-6). Therefore, the storm stands out not only for its visual and audible climax, whose sexual connotations can hardly be missed, but also for its secret roots and its endless supply and exertion of energy. And, with this, Thomson begins to consider not only the virtue of the initial impulse or fancy and its resulting or corresponding action, but also the virtue of the range of sentiments which follow.
By parenthesizing this storm with examples of human behaviour, Thomson not only makes the climax of the storm more dramatic or sublime, he also underscores his comparison of the storm's touch and expansion with human impulses (or swift fancies) and their subsequent actions. Thomson places his depiction of a man's forsaking of his animals in that brief "calm" between the "Touch etherial['s]" rousing the "Magazine of
Fate," and the storm's visible appearance in the sky (1115, 1112-13, 1129):
In rueful Gaze
The Cattle stand, and on the scouling Heavens
21 Martin A. Uman, "Ball Lightning," Lightning (Toronto: McGraw Hill, 1969) 243. See also Mark Stenhoff, Ball Lightning: An Unsolved Problem in Atmospheric Physics (New York: Plenum, 1999); James D. Barry, Ball Lightning and Bead Lightning (New York: Plenum, 1980). 174
Cast a deploring Eye; by Man forsook,
Who to the crouded Cottage hies him fast,
Or seeks the Shelter of the downward Cave. (1123-7)
The "Cattle" are "forsaken," left to cast their own "deploring Eye" on the "Heavens," while "Man" escapes. In "Spring," the overhanging "Gloom" of clouds leads "Man" to walk "Amid the glad Creation, musing Praise, / And looking lively Gratitude" before he shelters himself from the showers. In "Summer," however, "Man" appears already rushing away from the storm, bent on sheltering himself in a "crouded" and "downward" retreat whose comforts are dubious (1126-7). If the summer storm has "secret,"
"wrathful" roots (1104), "Man" has something of an intuitive knowledge of what to do in response to the storm's early warning signs, an impulse to shelter himself. Thomson's comparison of man and nature, then, suggests a similar secret dynamism or impulse which inspires action. And, by association, he wonders about the moral or emotional character of this impulse, if this, then, is human wrath. Over the course of the sequence,
Thomson renders moments of human intuition and action, or human sentiments, in progressively more detail. And the moment of intuition becomes, more clearly, a moment of fancied delight or danger.
With his rendering of man's instinct for self-preservation, here, Thomson wonders about the virtue of the impulse of the figure in the landscape. One cannot fault man for his impulse to save himself and not the cattle. The ability to secure himself sets man apart from the animals, and as Samuel Johnson defined the term, "cattle" are not
9^ "domestic" animals. Nor, however, are they "wild." Man must respond to changes in
22 "Spring" 170-2. 23 "Cattle," sense one, DEL. 175 nature, hurriedly, instinctively, and, even in his abandonment of the herd appears a sympathetic figure. By presenting the cattle with "a deploring Eye," however, Thomson makes it somewhat difficult to excuse man of his forsaking (1125). Both cattle and man contrast the praise-giving man in "Spring," and, while pitiable, might be held accountable for their denigration. A.D. McKillop argues that Thomson was "more interested after all in looking at a thunderstorm than in explaining, say, that Providence sent it to clear the air."24 Still, Thomson's cattle rue providence or its lack. Even if their "deploring Eye" merely returns or mirrors the look of the "scouling Heavens," the cattle appear to place blame in "casting" their "deploring" glances (1125-6). And the herd's apparent sentience raises doubts about human flight as a kind of forsaking. Thus, Thomson begins to associate the moral character of human impulses with the moral agency (or lack thereof) of the "Heavens" (1124). Here, man, if not heaven, appears criminal for having abandoned his cattle.
Thomson also wonders about the virtue of the imagination of the observer (his speaker or himself) and the audience. The flight of "Fancy" from which Thomson views the torrid zone begins from a place of retreat, "the Sweetness of the Shade" (631, 628 in
621-34). And even that "bold Fancy" might be considered if not the continuation then the renewal of the poet's earlier journey to the "midnight Depth / Of yonder Grove" where he meets with "airy Shapes" before he settles down upon the "dewy border" (516-17 in 516-
621). Here, the speaker's position does not change, for, in the opening lines of the sequence, Thomson recognizes that "a nearer scene of horror calls" his Muse "home"
(1103). As Cohen suggests, Thomson's description of the local grove is less a departure from the diseases and dangers of Africa he has just described. Rather, Thomson continues
24 McKillop 70. 176 to employ his fancy to illustrate that "horror and violence exist wherever nature does." 5
And Thomson reminds his readers that his description remains one of fancy or imagination by viewing man, here, rushing towards the place not only associated with the generation of the storm but also associated with that initial, dark "Grove" where
Thomson met his "shapes" and with the shade of the "dewy border" in which he sits.
Thus, Thomson places emphasis not only upon the potential passion or fancy which inspires the action of his rural subject, but also upon his own imagination (or his speaker's) and those of his comfortable readers.
Here, Addison's work on the "Pleasures of the Imagination" applies to Thomson's consideration of his own fancy and the situation of his readers:
...when we read of Torments, Wounds, Deaths, and the like dismal Accidents, our
Pleasure does not flow so properly form the Grief which such melancholy
Descriptions give us, as from the secret Comparison which we make between
ourselves and the Person who suffers. Such Representations teach us to set a just
Value upon our own Condition, and make us prize our good Fortune, which
exempts us from the like Calamities.26
Indeed, the speaker and the reader are not shepherds who forsake their cattle, and, in this, they are able to feel their own safety and give the cattle the due sympathies man could not. But Thomson's use of "Man" as opposed to "shepherds" implicates universally
(1125). His readers are men and women, and, like "Man," are absent from the calamitous scene. Thomson signals the election of the speaker and the reader as opposed to man, or,
at least, as opposed to the cattle he abandons. As the cattle stand "in rueful Gaze," the
25 Cohen 155. 26 Addison, Spectator no. 418 (cit. in Defence 144). readers, too, as Thomson s speaker suggests, catch both the cattle and harried man in
"rueful Gaze" (1123). Likewise, the sense of the term "Cattle" as a derogatory substitute for the masses or misinformed, and "used in reproach of human beings," shows the distinction Thomson makes between man and the cattle in the scene, and perhaps between the "rueful" speaker or reader and all of the objects included in his or her perspective, including, of course, this impulsive, forsaking man. Their differences from
"Man" aside, however, Thomson poses the storm as a potential danger for the speaker and, transitively, for his readers. Indeed, as Pope considers the virtue of his own rendering of "defect" in the "Epistle to a Lady," Thomson begins to wonder about the virtue of his own attraction, here, as he does throughout the piece.
Thomson not only emphasizes the potential danger and hence, the potential delight for the viewer of the storm, he also points to the vice that might be associated with making for a place of safety and, transitively, in seeing or imagining the storm from the perspective of the "Cave" or "Cottage" (1126-7). Blanford Parker suggests that
Thomson "draws both empire and sexuality into the problem of empirical curiosity" bringing the "hungry eye into new territory" in "Summer."28 As his muse draws him
"home," Thomson appears wary of the expense of this "empirical" project. For if "Man" represents the poet in his place of reverie or the readers of the poem, Thomson suggests,
90 as well, that one risks "forsaking" something or someone, if not heaven or the self, in the rush to see and to imagine, a potential error he treats as a potential vice in the story of
Amelia and Celadon. Indeed, the entire meteorological event is bound up in Thomson's consideration of man's sudden responses to violence in nature (and thus, the motives 27 "Cattle," sense two, DEL. 28 Parker 169. 29SeealsoIrlaml31ff. 178 behind them) and in his consideration of the potential consequences of gazing upon and taking pleasure in nature's violence.
Thomson wonders again about the virtue or quality of the speaker or observer's imagination with his description of the onslaught of the storm. Using the form of expression he employs throughout the sequence to make his lovers' glances less distinguishable from one another and from those of the speaker or reader of the poem,
Thomson suggests a potential collapse of the distinction between the observers and the eye of the storm. At the beginning of the verse paragraph which follows man's forsaking and ushers in the dynamic storm, Thomson makes the "eye," last referred to as the "eye" of "Cattle" (1125) the "startled Eye" of "all":
'Tis listening Fear, and dumb Amazement all:
When to the startled Eye the sudden Glance
Appears far South, eruptive thro' the Cloud; (1128-30)
With his "all," Thomson's "startled Eye" applies not only to the "amazed" observers, the speaker and his readers, but also to the observed "deploring Cattle," if not forsaking
"Man," as well. And, while one might first want to consider the "sudden Glance" that of the human or the cattle, in this regard, Thomson's line break surprises by making this
"Glance" the appearance of the lightning itself, a "sudden" emanation which, with its
"startling" recalls, likewise, the associated hastiness of "Man" and the "Touch etherial" that brought about the storm (1129, 1113). With Thomson, the distance between the
"optics seeing" and the "objects seen"30 becomes quite slim, suggesting the possibility of
a more dangerous and delightful view of the storm, yet also, perhaps the "dim" or vicious
imagination of the observers if not of the "Man" observed.
30 "Cobham" 24. Thomson not only prefaces the climax of his storm with an emphasis on the consequences of swift and intuitive responses to natural evil and, likewise, of looking upon and enjoying the violence in the landscape, he parenthesizes it. After the storm's
"convulsing Heaven and Earth" (1143) but before Thomson delineates the edges or apparent escape of a storm which, nonetheless, keeps storming (1161-8), Thomson confirms the death of the "Cattle." However, he splits the "blasted Cattle" into ranks:
A lifeless Groupe the blasted Cattle lie:
Here the soft Flocks, with that same harmless Look
They wore alive, and ruminating still
In Fancy's Eye; and there the frowning Bull,
And Ox half-rais'd. (1152-6)
Until 1744, this passage followed upon a more gruesome fate for "Man," as Thomson included the death of a shepherd on a cliff, struck by the ball-lightning31 he delineates in the hills of "Cheviot" and "Thule." By 1744, however, Thomson makes "Man" less sympathetic, and he makes his death toll chiefly animal, dividing his dumb-struck
"Cattle" into breeds of dumb-struck storm victims. Such empirical reckoning makes the deaths of the cattle pitiable and profound, as Thomson numbers those harmed by the storm and forsaken by man in "Fancy's Eye" (1155).
Here, moreover, not all of the cattle deplore heaven. While the bull still "frowns," reminiscent of the cattle's previous deploring, the ox's "half-rais'd" position not only mimics the shape and heft of an ox but also implies a failed attempt to reach a state of erection (1155-6). This has its obvious sexual implications, but it signals, most importantly, a failed attempt to glance at the heavens, either to pray or to curse.
31 Summer [1727ff.] 775-87, as in SEA, Appendix A, 290. See also McKillop 70-74. 180
Moreover, Thomson, perhaps with a reference to Virgil's consideration of the "fair flocks" of Daphnis, though perhaps with a more ironic reference to man's superiority, devotes his first efforts to observing the "harmless Look" and "ruminat[ion]" of those symbols of innocence, the "soft Flocks" (1153-4).32 Thomson's sympathy for the sheep makes them more difficult to discount than the cattle deploring the heavens. The sheep, in their dead looks, which might also be said to be their looks in life, only ruminate or meditate. With such lifelike, soft and sentient looks in death, Thomson throws more doubt upon man's forsaking, and thus, upon the motives which lead to this forsaking.
And, if only transitively, he places less emphasis on heaven's forsaking. Here, at least, the eye of fancy or of the onlooker appears, safe and ascendant.
However, while "Man" in this scene appears more vulnerable, he also appears more suspect, and, as such, the eye of fancy, too, becomes suspicious. The "Woods" which "Start at the Flash" show that the storm reaches the deepest "Recess, / Wide- flaming out," thus presenting further danger for the "trembling Inmates" who "shake" inside of the cave or cottage (1158-60). The "Starting" of the woods, their personified fear of the storm, or the literal kindling of their fiery destruction, resembles the unseen
"Touch" of the storm (1159, 1113). Likewise, Thomson observes the "Inmates"33 who, in their first impulses, rushed to save themselves, shaken by fear, and forced again, to seek cover (1160). With all of this "trembling," Thomson suggests that the impulse in nature and in man occurs not only as a single set of thoughts or feelings and responses, akin to
Virgil, Eclogue V, 43-44: "Daphnis ego in silvis, hinc usque ad sidera notus, /formosi pecoris custos, formosior ipse," or, "Daphnis was I amid the woods, known from here even to the stars. Fair was my flock, but fairer I, their shepherd." Eclogues. Georgics. Aeneid 1-6. Trans. H. R. Fairclough, Rev. G. P. Goold, Loeb (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1999) 56-7. See also Hagstrum, The Sister Arts 296-9. 33 "Inmate," DEL: "Inmates are those that be admitted to dwell for their money jointly with another man, though in several rooms of his mansion-house, passing in and out by one door." See also "Winter" 322-88. 181 the "picture gallery method of 'see and respond'" Hagstrum associates with Thomson's pictorialism,34 but also as a series of swift and sudden shifts between impulse (or, later, fancy) and action, a vigorous repetition of said "method" (1160). And, as the storm's violence increases, Thomson presents man's escape to the "crouded Cottage" (1126) with little joy, a "homecoming reversed,"35 as John Goodridge might say, not in the sense of man's inability to return to his populated family home, like the swain in "Winter," but as man's rush to a borrowed space full of agitated bodies, those hot prisons of "Winter" which Thomson's speaker derides immediately after the swain's death.36
Thomson makes man's position in the cottage or cave pitiable in that it is less admirable. Yet in this situation, the character of man's initial impulse becomes questionable, too. The storm is sublime because of Thomson's placing people in danger.
But Thomson sees humankind as potentially suspect. As such, he sheds doubt not only upon the virtue of "Man's" impulses, but also upon the character of the imaginative poet and his readers, and the virtue of their retreat. They have not only escaped and delighted in the storm. They might be said to tremble, too, in and for their own ascendancy.
34 Hagstrum, The Sister Arts 256. 35 John Goodridge, Rural Life in Eighteenth-Century English Poetry (New York: Cambridge UP, 1995) 81 (ref. "Winter" 276-315). 36 See Chapter Five. 182
1169-1222: Meeting "Instant Fate" with Love and Confidence
The Amelia and Celadon story (1169-1222) is more sensuous and more instructive when considered in response to the preceding scene. Thomson propounds the relationship between Amelia and Celadon as reliance upon a shared sentiment, "Love"
(1193). And he presents their reliance upon and cultivation of this love in a relationship which "does not discount the delights of the body, 'unlibidinous' (5.449), but unashamedly physical" as Jean Hagstrum characterizes Milton's Adam and Eve.
Unlike Milton's pre-lapsarian environment, however, Thomson's violent landscape does not reveal the providential hand of God or an organizing power in nature. As Thomson parenthesizes his storm with an emphasis on human instinct to amplify the storm's sublimity, he prefaces the reprise of the summer thunderstorm in the bodies and minds of
Amelia and Celadon with an epigram38 that relates "Guilt's" intuitive response to natural violence to a lack of visible providence in nature (1169-1171). Thomson's epigram and his reprise of the storm in the lovers' responses to the equally violent storm at hand make the moral character of the love of Amelia and Celadon rather dubious, their impulses and actions potentially "guilty" ones (1169). Simultaneously, the character and the very presence of an ordering power in nature appear dubious. Yet Thomson still vies for virtue and for order. The potential proof of the virtue of Amelia and Celadon's love, and of the existence and the benevolence of a mysterious, organizing power in nature lies in the lovers' differences from the human and animal figures in the opening storm.
Thomson delineates the guilty response to natural evil to question the relative
virtue or vice of Amelia and Celadon's responses to the natural world. Thomson
37 Hagstrum, Sex and Sensibility 28. 38 See Roger D. Lund, "The Ghosts of Epigram, False Wit, and the Augustan Mode" 67-95. delineates the response of Guilt" to changes in the environment as a mode of launching into epigrammatic expression (1169). And, in so doing, he recalls the flight of man in the storm and the convulsion of the storm itself. He suggests, in his epigram, that nature is not providential, at least, "not always" by first emphasizing the swift responses of "Guilt' to natural violence:
GUILT hears appall'd, with deeply troubled Thought;
And yet not always on the guilty Head
Descends the fated Flash. (1169-71)
To suggest that the guilty party is "appalled," or "troubled," in the face of natural evil is to suggest that one reads natural violence as personal retribution for one's criminality
(1169). This is the kind of "deploring" heaven which made the cattle at once deplorable and pitiful for their lack of reason, their mere reflection of heaven's wrath (1123). And this is the type of misunderstanding which Thomson apparently wants to avoid in his depiction of the storm's following man into the grove (1158-60). The death of the "soft
Flocks" appears, already, to prove the rule about a lack of literal or visible providence in nature (1153). However, Thomson leaves room with the words "not always," to sustain the connection between "Man's" "forsaking" of those "soft Flocks" and the storm's encroaching upon his abode as retribution, its "fated Flash" (1170-1) Thomson vies, nonetheless, for a more sophisticated mode of thinking about order in nature and about the moral character or agency of this ordering power.
Thomson's epigram makes the interaction between Amelia and Celadon a test
case for "Guilt," and, as such, he presents their actions in comparison to those of "Man"
and the animals in the previous episode (1169). Importantly, the "guilty," in the face of the storm, know themselves, or prove "guilty" by responding to nature, by becoming
"appall'd" (1169). This resembles Pope's rather ironic suggestion of the vices in the
"Epistle to Cobham" that one might see the ruling passion strongest in death or in those moments directly preceding it.39 Amelia's "death-day," too, is her "moment of truth," and one must read the scene to interpret if and how heaven chooses to discriminate between "the guilty Head" and the innocent one (1170). One must look for evidence of providence in nature as one looks for evidence of sexual experience in the lovers. Thus, at the outset of the narrative, Thomson suggests that he might be presenting something scandalous, perhaps, as Turner, suggests, something pornographic. Blanford Parker, who, notably, links Pope and Thomson for their "fundamentally empirical, painterly turn of mind,"40 argues that both Pope's Temple of Fame and The Seasons "are de-allegorized allegories in which the observing power seems to override any moral purpose."41 And, with his consideration of sexuality, here, Thomson both emphasizes and calls into question the virtue or moral purpose of the lovers and of himself and his readers in relation to their observing powers, both their sight and their insight or imagination.
Thomson is not without moral purpose in this scene or in the sequence. The purpose of Thomson's depiction Amelia and Celadon, as with his depiction of Damon and Musidora, is to espouse the identification and cultivation of virtuous love. This relationship is akin to that the fusion of sex and virtue42 Hagstrum identifies in Milton's pre-lapsarian Adam and Eve (1176). Thomson is a proponent of companionate marriage, and he looks for an informing "Power" in the hearts of his lovers in order to promote his
39 "Cobham" 222-7. Pope points to Cobham's consistency of passion in life and death in "Cobham" 263. 40 Parker 148. 41 Parker 149. 42 Hagstrum, Sex and Sensibility 24-49. See also Turner 18. 185 cause (1184). Yet he remains aware and takes advantage of the irony of propounding such a relationship in such a violent setting. Thomson promotes a "guileless Passion [...] as in the Dawn of Time inform'd the Heart / of Innocence," but he uses a flexible simile to compare the "Passion" of Amelia and Celadon with the passion which, likewise,
"inform'd" the hearts and minds of those in the Golden Age (1177-9).
Thomson's discussion of the experience of the couple makes their virtue rather questionable. He begins, notably, by pronouncing the lovers' plausible sexual experience, they "lov'd" (1177), "Devoting all / To Love" (1182-3). This claim refers to his earlier appreciation of married love in "Spring"43 in which he championed a similar visionary reciprocity between a pair of well-matched partners. The lovers, here, in contrast to the pair in "Spring," do not appear to be married. Still, Thomson insists on their love's virtue.
And Thomson defends their passion as a virtue by suggesting that the lovers' relationship, as in "Spring," is an imaginative one. A "Love" of "mutual Wish, sympathetic Glow" appears in the light Amelia and Celadon emit, "beaming" from "the mutual Eye," seemingly without much volition on their part, and in a manner which makes their eyes or glances, as the glances at the outset of the storm, hardly distinguishable (1180-2). However, the contrast of the soft "Glow" of their glances with the violent "Glance" of the storm makes the lovers' mutual glances, nonetheless, potentially violent or vicious (1181, 1129).
As with his delineation of the origin of the storm, that "Touch etherial," Thomson makes the moment of the lovers' fatal error difficult to pin-point, though he relates this to their fancy or imagination, those bright glances "inform'd" by their love (1113, 1178).
The lovers' correspondence becomes dubious when Thomson notes that the lovers
43 "Spring" 1113-76. 186
"look'd unutterable Things" (1188).44 The "unutterable" quality suggests these looks cannot be read or understood, as Calypso's charms in Pope. Here, the couple's mutual vision, though inspired by that passion, "Love," might be criminal (1183). And, as with the thunderstorm's description of "Man" in his haste, this "unutterable" descriptor, notably, makes the position of the reader or viewer potentially suspicious (1188). There is a great deal of danger and delight, after all, and as Thomson has already intimated, in being reminded that one has not been invited or admitted to a scene which one, nonetheless, views, and in realizing that one has escaped the calamity which ensues.
Indeed, the couple's temporary illegibility or silence confirms the outsider-ness of the reader or viewer and, simultaneously, makes the couple potentially guilty, too. Still, in so doing, Thomson insists upon the "sensory elitism" of his lovers, a phrase coined by
James Grantham Turner to describe the poet's attempts in "Spring and Summer" to
"harness the effects of the libertine sublime for 'virtuous Love.'"45 Here, ideal "Love" or
"Passion" requires two virtuous souls whose looks guide one another, a "clear, united stream" not comprehensible by others (1183, 1176, 1189).
Drawing upon his anxieties about spectatorship in the first scene, Thomson presents the error of the visionary couple, his "sensory elite," not by suggesting that they forsake others or outsiders but by suggesting that they risk losing themselves or one another as a result of the reciprocal passion and the imagination which unites them.
Thomson's lovers prove themselves momentarily blind or resistant to the chaos in the world around them in their mutual correspondence:
Heedless how far, and where its Mazes stray'd,
Confirmed in Defence 142-3. Turner 25. 187
While, with each other blest, creative Love
Still bade eternal Eden smile around. (1192-4)
Their "creative Love" represents, as in "Spring," a procreative, sexual virtue as opposed to lust or animal carnality (1193).46 In light of "Spring's" confirmation of the retreat and the world made by the family, an "Elegant Sufficiency" of "Retirement, rural Quiet,
Friendship, Books" under the guise of "approving HEAVEN,"47 the lovers here, too, appear as heroes, visionaries able to make something out of the world, to make an "Eden" of the "Maze" in which they stray (1194, 1192). Still, their mutual fancy or shared passion appears the means of their error. Their "awaken'd Power / of giving Joy" (1184-
5), so much like the secret power which brought about the thunderstorm, makes them miss the first signs of that storm altogether.
If Thomson's depiction of the lovers' dangerous mutual vision is as suggestive as it is instructive, (and indeed, like Milton, Thomson intends to propound the lovers' virtuous passions), his depiction of their response to the storm's onslaught is likewise both sensual and didactic. If the lovers are momentarily blinded to the world around in their mutual emission of light, they are, nonetheless, quite responsive to that world when they come to look upon it. Moreover, they come to rely upon their powerful fancies, once again, in order to brave the storm. Just after Thomson claims that "eternal Eden smile[s] around," Amelia appears
Heavy with instant Fate her Bosom heav'd
Unwonted Sighs, and stealing oft a Look
Of the big Gloom on CELADON her Eye
46 "Spring" 1113-76 47 "Spring" 1161-65. 188
Fell tearful, wetting her disorder'd Cheek.
In vain assuring Love, and Confidence
In HEAVEN repress'd her Fear; it grew, and shook
Her frame near Dissolution. (1195-1201)
Thomson and his readers, prepared by the epigram in the poem and perhaps by the reports of the death of two lovers by lightning in Stanton Harcourt, Oxfordshire upon which this incident appears to be based,48 know that Amelia's death is imminent. And
Amelia's senses are tragically apt. This is the central irony of Thomson's scene. Amelia swiftly fancies what is coming, her own "Fate" or death by lightning (1195). Her bodily foreboding conforms, in particular, to a description in Pliny: "the current of air travels faster than the bolt, and [that] consequently, the object always is shaken and feels the blast before it is struck."49 Thomson, however, relates this shaking to Amelia's internal conflict, her ability to fancy, and hence, to fear her "Fate" as well as to her body's physical convulsion. Amelia's "Bosom," both her body and her conscience, sits "heavy" with this "instant Fate" (1195). Thus, one must consider Amelia's first response to
On July 31, 1718, Sarah Drew and John Hughes were struck by lightning and killed. The incident was reported in Mist's Weekly Journal. 16 August, 1718. This became a subject of interest to Pope and John Gay, the former having arrived in Oxfordshire in early August, 1718. Their letters on the subject are almost identical. John Gay, "Gay to F~, 9 August 1718," The Letters of John Gay Ed. C. F. Burgess, (Oxford: Clarendon, 1966) 33-5, and CP I: 479-83, 492-500, 522-4. Pope only changes his tone to suit his audience, reporting to Blount (6-9 Aug), Montagu, (1 Sept), Caryll (3 Sept) and Atterbury (8 Sept), as he composes an epitaph for the pair to be engraved upon a local monument (in The Weekly Packet. 11 October, 1718). Both Pope and Gay observe that Drew and Hughes were known to love one another but without scandal, as they meant to marry. Hearing the storm approach, Sarah is frightened or paralyzed with fear and falls down. John will not abandon her. They sit on hay or cover themselves with straw. The strike, itself, is only related by local reports of the sound of a crack. The lovers are found in a haze of smoke from the burning sheaves surrounding them. The couple appears stiffened in an embrace. Both Gay and Pope report that Sarah's body is only singed along her eyebrow and in a spot above her breast, making for lively remarks on her love or passion. In Gay, John is blackened. In Pope, John has minimal scarring. Both confirm that one of John's arms remains around Sarah's neck, while the other covers her eyes as if to shield her from the lightning. It is dubious if Thomson saw these letters. At the time of the incident he was still in Edinburgh. Gay's letter on the event was the only letter Pope printed, and not until 1737. Still, it is quite possible that the report or the letters might have been circulated among his circle of friends in London in the 1720's. 49 Pliny II, LV. 189 natural change, her "instant" imagination of her "Fate" as potential evidence of "Guilt"
(1195, 1169). Importantly, Thomson's reference to Amelia's "instant Fate" also stretches back to the previous scene, to the "Touch etherial" in nature and in man (1195, 1113).
And, as such, Thomson demands a particular attention to Amelia's response to both her partner and to the heavens, whether she runs or remains, and whether she deplores or praises.
The glances Amelia makes in response to her sudden revelation are possibly transferred both to her partner and to the heavens, reprising the collapse of optics and objects Thomson used to delineate the onslaught of the eye of the storm itself. Thomson perhaps suggests that Amelia's relationship to Celadon compares to her relationship to heaven. If "Thunder" rolled his "burden" to the "winds" only to continue thundering
(1135), Amelia, too, attempts to share her burden with both Celadon and the heavens, if only to keep convulsing. Amelia, stealing "a Look / Of the big Gloom" appears to be looking at the "Gloom" in the skies and, perhaps, at the "Gloom" in Celadon's own carriage, his own sense of foreboding, a foreboding reprised in his false confidences which follow (1196-7).50 Thus, Thomson maintains his notion of the lovers' relationship as a conversation of "unutterable" looks or fancies, even after he apparently parts the
"united stream" (1188, 1189). Amelia's glance, however, is "stolen," a theft of what appeared, before, an easy conversation (1196). And Thomson's reference to the "Gloom" in Celadon, or more likely, the heavens, is not prefaced by an adjective denoting that
Gloom's strange delightfulness, the very "Wish of Nature," nor is it followed by an
Versions of the poem previous to the 1744 and 1746 editions upon which Sambrook bases his Oxford edition include a comma after "Gloom," making such an interpretation less likely. account of man's concomitant praise of the heavens for rain, as in "Spring." Rather, this "Gloom" is "big" and foreboding (1197).
Still, Amelia (or her lover) responds to this gloom with something similar to praise, with a glance which recalls the lovers' previous powers of finding pleasure wherever they roamed. Amelia attempts to repress her "Fear" with "vain assuring Love, and Confidence / In HEAVEN" (1199-1200). However, as with the exchanged glances, it is possible that Thomson, here, suggests the vain assurances of Love and Confidence in
CO heaven which extend Amelia's fear are as much hers as Celadon's assurances. Again,
Thomson's line break makes Amelia's "Love and Confidence" plausibly "Love and
Confidence" in the human partner before he delivers that right to "HEAVEN." In so doing,
Thomson perhaps suggests that Amelia's love, as much as Celadon's, is both a passion for her partner and an ardour for the organizing power in nature which she imagines in the face of violence. This love and confidence, then, contrasts the behaviour of forsaking man in the storm, and presents Amelia's faith in the help of man and heaven. Still, this faith appears largely as a vain faith employed to abet her fears. Indeed, her "vain assurances]," which seek the confirmation of "approving HEAVEN"53 already granted to the married pair in "Spring," make the returns of "HEAVEN" in approval of Amelia's virtue likewise questionable (1199).
Thomson's critics have considered Celadon's possible role as the guilty party in the scene. For example, James Sambrook argues that "Thomson's irony is directed
51 "Spring" 151-5. 52 My reading of this passage is rather controversial, in that I consider this passage an instance in which Thomson considers the likelihood of both parties' confidence in and love of heaven. Yet, particularly in light of Thomson's continual emphasis upon the "collapse" of distinctions between parties in these scenes, Thomson's concern for Amelia's sentiments appears as likely as his consideration of Celadon's. 53 "Spring" 1164. 191 against Celadon's simple view (1204-14) of a moral universe."54 And Ralph Cohen, considering Amelia "fearful," as we rightly should, suggests that Celadon's speech proves that "idealized cliches can provide no proper interpretation of the moral control of the universe."55 Yet Thomson also prompts wonder about Amelia's "Confidence in
Heaven" as evidence of guilt or ignorance. Thomson makes Amelia's "repression" of
"Fear" (1200), or, the expression or extension of her fancied, "instant Fate" (1195) a series of sensual convulsions, and, as such, a reprise of the storm's equally sensual and violent "convulsing Heaven and Earth" in her mind and body (1143). Indeed, as Cohen argues, the episode proves an "ironic commentary upon 'stormy Life' and 'Tempest- beaten.'"56 By reprising this storm in Amelia's body and mind in her anticipation of her death, Thomson roots Amelia's behaviour in what Hagstrum calls "sexual earth."
Amelia's "unwonted Sighs" cohere with her "unutterable" looks in terms of their potential for presenting both innocence and experience (1196, 1189). Amelia's body shakes "near Dissolution" (1201), her whole frame potentially disintegrating and raining down as the tear on her "disorder'd cheek" (1198). This is a climax which recalls the storm, though it is a far less detailed description of convulsion than Thomson's display of lightning and thunder. However, over the course of the sequence, Thomson will continually reprise the storm in the mind and body, until the appearance and effects of
"Love" are equal to that of the thunderstorm itself (1199).
In view of the epigram, and in view of the behaviour of the previous figures of the landscape during the storm, one might pause to consider whether Amelia's "vain" "Love"
54 SEA 355nl 171-1222. 55 Cohen 158. 56 Cohen 157. 57 Hagstrum, Sex and Sensibility 4. 192 and "Confidence" represents the vice of "vanity" or a virtuous faith in the goodness of
Celadon and "HEAVEN" (1199-1200). If we are to attribute these assurances to Amelia, then she uses these assurances, after all, to repress, and in so doing, to extend her main emotion of fear. Pope foresaw Cobham's death as honourable. His final, "Oh, save my
Country, Heav'n" shows Cobham's selfless hope for a "Country" which might, indeed,
CO be beyond hope. In those final gestures which might, in the end, blacken her good name as her body becomes a "blacken'd Corse" (1216), Thomson makes Amelia's virtue sophisticated but hardly spoiled, urging a consideration of the benefits of her dependence upon her passion, and the quality of that love. Turner suggests that Thomson does not work to fuse "sex and sensibility." Rather, he works in the "tradition of the libertine sublime" in that "his erotic effects are poised between heroic virtue and illustrious depravity, and derive their energy from blurring rather than reinforcing such boundaries."59 Thomson blurs the lines here, too. However, when considered against the previous episode, Amelia's response to her "instant Fate" proves unlike her predecessors and makes her more virtuous than depraved (1195).
Amelia appears superior to her predecessors in the storm episode and to other prose and poetic treatments of her potential model, Sarah Drew. According to the accounts of Gay and Pope, Drew was so entirely defeated by her fear that she could not move to save herself. Thomson presents an emphasis on fancy by showing that Amelia is particularly sensitive to her "instant Fate," dreading its onslaught, though she appears, in her equally swift "vain assurance" in "Heaven," more heroic than the Sarah Drew described by the Scriblerians (1195, 1199-1200). This heroism derives from the scene's 58 "Cobham" 265. 59 Turner 18 (ref. to Hagstrum's appreciation of Thomson's phrase "Esteem Enliven'd by Desire," from "Spring" 1121, in Sex and Sensibility 12, 160-85). association with the storm. Unlike "Man," Amelia does not run. Of course, she is unable to do so. And, perhaps, in contrast to the guilty at the outset of this passage who know they are wrong, Amelia rallies herself to at least dissemble "Confidence" in heaven's
"Love" (1200). Additionally, unlike the cattle casting their glances on the heavens at the outset of Thomson's storm, vain though her actions might be, Amelia looks to "HEAVEN' with "Love" and "Confidence" rather than deploring. She is sympathetic, because of
Thomson's implicit association of her weeping with the "ruminating" eyes of the "soft
Flocks," and perhaps more pitiable, too (1154). For with this association, Thomson, as
Virgil in the Eclogues, emphasizes Amelia's superiority to the flocks, the propensity for both imagination and reason. And, hence, he mourns the impending loss of such a mind of love.60
Thomson does not necessarily make Amelia blind to the vanity of her prayers, nor, however, is this vanity representative of her guilt. As Ralph Cohen argues of
Celadon's more strident declarations, this is "supposed to be a series of false claims."61
One may want to blame heaven, then, for Amelia's loss, but she does not, in the end, deplore heaven or Celadon. If her fault is her consideration of her own election and her own goodness while she remains, at heart, a guilty person, then a literal providence in nature would prevail. Her "blacken'd Corse" (that dark form so unlike the Scriblerian corpse of Sarah Drew) would simply prove Thomson's epigram wrong by proving heaven "always" providential (1216, 1170). But Thomson will not affirm such a literal view. With his contrast between Amelia and the previous figures on the scene, Thomson considers the emotional benefits of Amelia's dependence upon heaven, the power or
Virgil Eclogues V, 42-4. See above 180n32. Cohen 158. importance of believing in a benevolent order or presence in nature, despite its apparent wrath. Perhaps Thomson condones her bold and upright reliance on her passion, love.
That the exercise of this virtue corresponds both to the natural violence which kills
Amelia and to sexual activity makes Thomson's lesson tragic and sensuous, and thus, all the more emphatic.
Celadon's behaviour is likewise sensual. In his longer response to Amelia's brief assertions, which, indeed, might be considered his own, Celadon:
perceived
Th'unequal Conflict, and as Angels look
On dying Saints, his Eyes Compassion shed,
With Love illumin'd high. 'Fear not, he said,
'Sweet Innocence! Thou Stranger to Offence,
'And inward Storm! HE, who yon Skies involves
'In Frowns of Darkness, ever smiles on thee,
'With kind Regard. O'er thee the secret Shaft
'That wastes at Midnight, or th'undreaded Hour
'Of noon, flies harmless: and that very Voice,
'Which thunders Terror thro' the guilty Heart
'With Tongues of Seraphs whispers Peace to thine.
"Tis Safety to be near thee sure, and thus
'To clasp Perfection!' (1201-14)
Celadon appears both sympathetic for and aroused by Amelia. Their fancies are equally apt. He gathers Amelia's inner "Conflict" from her glances, and he utters his confident statement about her innocence, a "personalized" version of Psalm 91, while glancing upon Amelia (1202). As Turner argues of "Spring" and of Thomson's early letters,
Thomson presents, here, a "Boswellian juxtaposition of Presbyterian intensity and exhilarated sensualism" suggesting that he was in "search of a synthesis, for a means to integrate" his "religious vision and his universal fascination with sexual arousal."63 As his eyes shed "Compassion," Celadon speaks with his own "Love, Illumined high"
(1203-4). He appears excited by Amelia's looks and by his own words about the violence in nature and God's providential powers. Yet his "high" illumination also emphasizes the outright "Gloom" of his assurances of God's punishment of the guilty and sparing of the innocent (1204, 1197). Thomson assumes a "hierarchy and order" here, as in the relationship between Milton's Adam and Eve64 to delineate Celadon's increased anxiety on Amelia's behalf. His darker and perhaps more gloomy version of "Love, and
Confidence," becomes a forthright, "illumin'd" arousal, suggestive, perhaps, of the
"freedom and release" Hagstrum identifies in Milton's couple (1199, 1204).65
Celadon's assertions are more emphatic, or thunderous, but not, themselves, visual or realistic. Rather, they appeal to the imagination of the observer, and thus, call into question not only Celadon's virtue but also the virtue of the observer's imagination.
In denying the potential of the "secret shaft" to "waste" her, Celadon produces the wasting of Amelia's body in potential. His notion that Amelia is a "stranger" to both
"Offence" and "inward storm" presents the arousing novelty of her seeming "offence" as well as that of her "inward storm," calling into question the virtue of both lovers (1208,
62 Also in SEA 355nl 171-1222. 63 Turner 21. 64 Hagstrum, Sex and Sensibility 35. 65 Hagstrum, Sex and Sensibility 37. 196
1205-6). Yet with this "Strange"-ness, Thomson emphasizes the virtue of Celadon's imagination, in that Celadon confirms Amelia's innocence (1205). Following Pliny, again, in his notion that "Nobody hit has ever seen or heard the lightning in advance,"
Thomson does not delineate Amelia's wasting in detail, remarking upon the fatal flash as he so clearly delineated the behaviour of the lightning itself in his description of the storm. Rather, he draws out this wasting as the lover's anticipation and denial of physical death, forcing his readers to imagine the tragic fate denied by Celadon's "Love, illumin'd high," his vainer and more confident assertions about the violence of the "shaft" that will never touch his beloved (1204, 1208). The innuendo, then, as Thomson emphasizes, here, belongs to the reader or observer of the scene.
Celadon might be criticized more for his assertion that nature acts providentially, his more pronounced sense of egoistic providence, than Amelia for her plain "Confidence
/ In Heaven" (1199-1200). But, like Amelia, Celadon's relation to the previous figures in the storm scene, and his difference from the other existing literary treatments of the model offer potential proof that his love is more virtuous than depraved. As Sambrook claims, "Thomson makes no attempt to lessen the mystery of Heaven (1215)" in
Celadon's prayer, "but in the manner of the Book of Job [...] shows God's power and man's incomprehension of God's purposes."67 In the existing accounts of the incident at
Stanton Harcourt, both of the lovers died. And Celadon's very "Embrac[ing]" of Amelia suggests that he would likely be affected by the shock of lightning that strikes her (1214).
Celadon, placing more faith in his beloved's virtue than his own, argues that "'tis safety
Pliny II, LV. SEA 355nl 171-1222. 197 to be near thee, sure," which, particularly in light of the losses of the cattle in the previous scene, raises doubts about his own safety (1213).
Surprisingly, Thomson saves Celadon, or at least, it appears as if Celadon remains alive:
From his void Embrace,
(Mysterious Heaven!) that moment, to the Ground
A blacken'd Corse, was struck the beauteous Maid.
But who can paint the Lover, as he stood,
Pierc'd by severe Amazement, hating Life,
Speechless, and fix'd in all the Death of Woe!
So, faint Resemblance, on the Marble-Tomb,
The well-dissembled Mourner stooping stands,
For ever silent, and for ever sad. (1214-22)
As one cannot find the exact source of that touch that began the tempest, one cannot see the lightning that "struck the beauteous Maid" to the "Ground" (1215-16). Thomson focuses on Celadon's appearance, the "Embrace" which remains "Void" of life, suggesting that Celadon has not even had the chance to "clasp perfection" at all before she is taken from him (1214). Thus, Celadon's arousal appears to have been constituted only in looking on and not in even touching Amelia's "sainted" frame (1203). Amelia, at least, appears to remain pure. If Amelia's "blacken'd Corse," that detail which so separates her from the barely scathed Sarah Drew of Stanton Harcourt, proves Thomson's epigram true in terms of nature's blackening an innocent character instead of a guilty one, then, indeed, one might view Celadon as a figure of vice (1216). 198
However, Thomson will not make Celadon's passion vicious either. Thomson recalls his words from "Spring," "Who can paint / like Nature?"68 in his attempts to humbly yet more amply "paint the Lover" in "Speechless" horror (1217, 1219). And
Thomson keeps Celadon's virtue intact, his "Angel" to Amelia's "Saint," by making
Celadon "hate Life" rather than the heavens (1202-3, 1218). True, "Life" and "Heaven" or even "God" might be indistinguishable. However, though he "hates Life," Celadon, who is more Job-like than Pope's Sir Balaam, does not look to heaven to place blame.
Celadon, "stooping," appears more like the half-raised Ox than one of Thomson's general, deploring Cattle (1221). His "faint Resemblance" to the "Mourner" at the
"Marble-Tomb," his presence as a statuesque mourner "stooping" over the equally statuesque "Marble-Tomb" of Amelia's body, proves his difference from the first cattle who stood deploring, and, more so, from the "Man" who ran away (1220-2). Celadon's
"well-dissembled" appearance (1221), his "hating Life" (1218) without casting his glances towards heaven recalls Thomson's reference to the lovers' previous
"undissembling Truth" (1179) and might, then, suggest Celadon's false nature. But the approval in Thomson's "well-dissembling" also draws attention to the vanity of
Celadon's confirmations about Amelia's innocence, his consciousness of the falsehood of his claims about providence in nature, and his inability, thus, to cast a glance upward in an equally vain but far less optimistic act of deploring (1221). Thomson presents
Celadon's persistence in loving Amelia, if not life, or, finally, a higher power.
Thus, in his second version of the storm, the storm of the human mind and body,
Thomson reprises his natural display in the bodies of his lovers to question the virtue of their reliance on their "Love" and to question the presence and character of an organizing
68 "Spring" 468-9. power in nature. The epigram makes one read the passage for signs of "Guilt" in the lovers and for providence in nature (1169). If one finds, in the lovers, a virtuous "Love" akin to the innocents in Milton, it is not, then, a love without its sophistication or danger.
Thomson shows that the friendship and desire of the couple, their co-reliance upon
"Love" is a rare ideal, and its imagination is also dangerous, as it makes one temporarily blind to the violent assaults of nature. Still, with Amelia's "Confidence" in the face of nature's violence and Celadon's fanciful assurances, Thomson suggests that while
"HEAVEN" is not providential but "(Mysterious!)" there is merit in their faith and prayer
(1199-1200, 1215). The lovers' seemingly vain assertions of faith in the discretion of heaven and in their own "Love" enable them to cope with the evil that lies before them without casting blame upwards or upon one other. This is the kind of persistent faith professed by Thomson at the close of "Winter."69 And, in "Summer," Thomson's lovers are guilty only of proclaiming their "Confidence" in "Heaven" and the merits of their
"Love" in their final, desperate moments of living.
See Chapter Five. 200
1223-1268: The Exercise of Fancy
Thomson's delineation of the body and exercise of a lithe male swimmer, his first swimming scene, is sensuous and instructive in its own right, and more so in light of its relationship with the two previous scenes. Drawing from Amelia's tragically apt "instant
Fate" or fancy (1195), Thomson teaches the importance of cultivating the fancy in order to defend oneself against the violence of the natural world and, perhaps more importantly, against the "swift Elapse" of one's own mind (1262). With his swimmer,
Thomson presents a brief battle between a virtuous impulse allied with truth and a sense of order in the creation, and a blocking, dark fancy, associated with falsehood, fear and natural disorder or decline. And he continues to laud the championship of the former over the latter by considering the virtues of the swimmer's sports in reference to the violent phenomena of the previous scenes. Moreover, comparing himself with the swimmer,
Thomson lauds not only the exercise of the individual's mind and body but also the observation of another's "purity" of body and mind as a means of cultivating individual fortitude.
As in the first episode, Thomson emphasizes the swimmer's virtues with the use of parentheses. He begins with words of warning, a sermon, and he concludes with epigram. With his sermon on the "Spark the Tempest wak'd" (1241), Thomson both confirms the virtue of his lovers in the previous scene and places emphasis upon the fears championed by the swimmer in the scene which follows. Moving from the death scene to a landscape softened and renewed, Thomson's speaker not only suggests that his readers recall the previous devastation as a way of enjoying the renewed scene, he demands it. 201
With a coy, Miltonic fondness, considering "thankless man / Most-favoured" (1237),
Thomson warns of man's potential forgetfulness:
Shall he, so soon forgetful of the Hand
That hush'd the Thunder, and serenes the Sky,
Extinguish'd feel that Spark the Tempest wak'd,
That Sense of Power exceeding far his own,
Ere yet his feeble Heart has lost its Fears? (1239-43)
In relation to the previous scene, this bit of sermonizing supports the virtuous sentiments and prayers of Thomson's lovers. Heaven might not, indeed, be responsible for choosing one lover over the other, but in returning to a "Hand" that "hush'd the Thunder" and
"serenes the Sky" (1239-40), Thomson suggests heavenly involvement in returning the landscape to its calm, a personified "Power" in nature whose "Hand" brings tranquility
(1242, 1239). This benevolence supports Thomson's consideration of Amelia and
Celadon's persistent faith in heaven or in one another as evidence of their virtue. Their
"Love, and Confidence," vain seeming though it might be, proves a virtuous persistence, a faith in that "Sense of Power exceeding far their own" the speaker requires here (1199-
1200, 1242). It may be that the speaker's sermon-like tone appears ironic, shedding some doubt upon the sermon as a confirmation of their virtue. Still, Thomson employs his
"negative rhetoric of fear and trepidation"70 in the process of removing himself from a scene in which he confirmed the "mysterious" power of heaven by its lack of a visible, literal, and egoistic providence (1215). And, in so doing, he acknowledges the apparent vanity, but, hence, the potential virtue of his own assurance of confidence in and fear of
an organizing power in nature.
70 Mary Jane Scott, James Thomson. Anglo-Scot 190. 202
Thomson also uses the sermon to call attention to the fears experienced and overcome by the swimmer in the lines that follow. The sermon demands that his readers remember the violence of the previous episodes as a way of responding to the renewed natural scene and to the swimmer's behaviour therein. Thomson demands that his readers recall the "Spark the Tempest Wak'd" as a way of expressing gratitude for that "Power exceeding his own" in the natural world (1241-42). As Lethbridge notes, Thomson wants
"fear and awe" to "prompt the survivor (the reader) to use 'that Spark the Tempest
71 wak'd' in order to lead a virtuous life or at least a life of gratitude."
But how is one to "use" this "Spark?" First, one must identify the "Spark" not only as the violence of nature without, but also, of course, as a motivating impulse within, and, in reference to Thomson's previous delineations, a potentially vicious one.
The "Spark the Tempest waked" recalls the invisible "Touch etherial" which started the thunderstorm and the series of sudden "Glances" which resulted from that initial "Touch"
(1241, 1113, 1129). The "Spark" also refers to the instinct in man for self-preservation during the storm, and to Amelia's "instant Fate," not only the lightning bolt itself, but
Amelia's tragically accurate, fancied "Fate" and, perhaps, her response to that fancy with
"assurances" of "Love" (1195-1203). Thus, the exclamation operates as a challenge.
Implying that the "feeble Heart" forgets the "Spark," Thomson implies that the strong in heart or, the virtuous, in the comparison, would not necessarily lose their fears, as Amelia did not, but that they would identify them and assure themselves of a superior fate or love, however "vain" such assurance might seem (1199).
To emphasize the virtue of the swimmer's initial fancy or desire, and, more importantly, his disavowal of a fancied but insubstantial danger, Thomson reprises and
71 Defence 147. reverses the tragic violence of the thunderstorm and of the Amelia and Celadon episode in the swimmer's response to the "milder Beam":
CHEAR'D by the milder Beam, the sprightly Youth
Speeds to the well-known Pool, whose crystal Depth
A sandy Bottom shews. A while he stands
Gazing th'inverted Landskip, half afraid
To meditate the blue Profound below:
Then plunges headlong down the circling Flood.
His ebon Tresses, and his rosy Cheek
Instant emerge; and thro' th'obedient Wave,
At each short Breathing by his Lip repell'd,
With Arms and Legs according well, he makes,
As Humour leads, an easy-winding Path
While, from his polish'd Sides, a dewy Light
Effuses on the pleas'd Spectators round. (1244-56)
Unlike Thomson's fearful "Man," the swimmer does not speed away from the pool or from the center of attention. Rather, inspired by the "milder beam," he hastens towards the "well-known" pool (1244-5). His first response, then, is to answer the cheer of the natural world by seeking pleasure. Yet even Thomson's hero, the "sprightly Youth" experiences fear (1244). In comparison to the forewarned "feeble-hearted" "Man" in the sermon, the swimmer stops to consult his fears and to meditate that "blue Profound" before he plunges into the "circling Flood" (1243, 1248-9). Thus, he appears properly sensitive to that "Spark the Tempest wak'd" (1241). 204
In this renewed environment, the swimmer has the pleasure of choosing between his initial desire to swim, and his brief, blocking fancy, his fear of the "blue Profound"
(1248). Like Amelia, the swimmer, too, stands momentarily "afraid," though only "half afraid," and only in consideration of the clear water (1247). This contrast makes Amelia's tragedy more pronounced, while, nonetheless, confirming the accuracy of her own fancy.
Amelia was not able to remove herself from her situation, though she aptly fancied a fate which she then experienced. And Amelia's further response to that "instant Fate," her
"Confidence," appears, thus, a choice to "Love" rather than to deplore heaven (1199-
1200). In comparison, the swimmer, with his ability to choose between swimming and standing still to meditate the "Profound," appears the epitome of luxury (1248). Yet
Thomson employs the comparison to suggest that the swimmer aptly chooses between his initial and pleasant desire and a false or fancied fear. The swimmer properly tempers his imagination by dismissing his fancied (and insubstantial) fears so as to fulfill his initial fancy or desire of indulging in the pleasures of the day.
Thomson continues to champion what appears a rather trivial triumph of the imagination or at least a triumph of reason over false imagination, by celebrating the virtues of the swimmer's sports. Again, Thomson demands considerable attention to the violence of the past. The swimmer's "Instant" appearance above the waves of the
"circling Flood" reverses Amelia's convulsive doom, revealing the swimmer's ability to live, breathe and to revive himself in the water (1251, 1249). And Thomson contrasts the
"easy-winding Path" and the swimmer's pursuit of his own "Humour" with the maze in which Amelia and Celadon lost themselves as a result of their mutual fancy or glow
(1254). Thomson considers the swimmer's propensity for error with this "easy-winding" 205 abandon. Yet, again, this allusion only emphasizes the swimmer's strength of body and mind, his ability to subdue the "obedient wave," and repel it with his "Breathing" and his
"Lip" as a reprise of his late championship of a false or fancied fear (1251-4). And, in so doing, Thomson again confirms the virtue of Amelia's fancy, both the aptitude of her initial, instant Fate and the virtue of her response to that fate with confidence in Celadon and in heaven.
Since Thomson provides an even closer look at the human body than in the previous episodes, the scene's sensuality is more forthright. And Thomson uses this physical detail to support his brief but vital consideration of the swimmer's decision to disregard a vicious or false fancy. The swimmer himself is not described as a nude or semi-nude, as the later Musidora. One can only distinguish the "sandy bottom" of the pool (1246). Still, Thomson presents a more visible body than that of Amelia, whose
"dissolution" (1201) is related only by Celadon's hearty confirmations that the "secret
Shaft" will not harm her blessed form (1208). As opposed to the blackened body of
Amelia or the statuesque frame of Celadon, the swimmer's "Cheek" is "rosy, and his
"arms and legs" appear "according well," as he takes pleasure in the exercise whose prospects drew him to the pool (1250, 1253). Indeed, with his "ebon tresses," he appears a "sprightly" draft of Milton's Adam of "hyacinthine locks."72 This is the life of the body denied Amelia, and the arousal suggested by the prayers of Celadon but voided by the flash. In comparison to the Amelia and Celadon incident, at least, Thomson delivers a satisfaction of the eye present in the delineation of the storm, and only imagined via the pronouncements of Celadon.
Milton, Paradise Lost IV, 301-303. 206
In this case, Thomson reprises the thunderstorm to celebrate the merits of the swimmer's body, and as such, the virtues of the swimmer's decision to choose pleasure in lieu of fancied and unfounded fears. Thomson lauds the swimmer's gem-like qualities.
The "Light" from the "polish'd sides" of the swimmer's body "Effuses on the pleas'd
Spectators round" (1255-6). Ironically, lightning strikes upon the human body are often reported by observers as a light which glows or repels from the sides of the body and which quite often leaves that body intact.73 Even without this particular observation in mind, the "Light" reflecting off of the swimmer's body recalls Amelia's death and the previous storm. The swimmer repels the "dewy Light" whose violent counterpart, moments ago, "blacken'd" Amelia so swiftly that Thomson could not delineate its blast
(1255, 1217). Yet this show of light proves not a violent phenomena but merely the reflection of the "milder beam" (1244). Thus, with the swimmer, Thomson returns to a wry but celebratory model of the relationship between the sun and the earth by delineating the body's ability to reflect light. This light, of course, refers to and reveals the "Spark the Tempest wak'd," both the impulse of the storm and of humankind in it
(1241). Yet Thomson celebrates the veritable strength of the body, its gem-like qualities, its hard repulsion and reflection.
As Thomson visibly reprises or reverses the violence of the storm to laud the swimmer's merits, he also condones the kind of observation he regarded as rather suspect in the opening of the poem. Thomson's emphasis on the light from the swimmer's body recalls the anxieties of spectatorship in the previous scenes as it diffuses those anxieties by acknowledging the pleasures of observing a liberal and liberated mind and body in a
73 See Pliny II, XLIX - LXll; Christopher A. Andrews ed., Lightning Injuries (Boca Raton: CRC, 1992); Uman. 207 milder, "CHEAR"-ful environment (1244). Here, Thomson licenses the observation of the swimmer and his "Humour" as a "pleas'd" acceptance (1254, 1256). There is a bitter irony about this pleasing observation in light of the tragedies of the past, as it recalls, indeed, the plausible pleasure of the audience in the annihilation and violence of the thunderstorm, particularly as this relates to Amelia. But Thomson, having acknowledged the necessity of cultivating a little "Fear," and having observed that "Fear" in his swimmer, licenses the pleasures of both bathing and of looking on as heroic faith in the virtue and benevolence of both nature and of "Man" (1243).
Thomson confirms the virtue of the swimmer's triumph over a brief but dark fancy by considering or, indeed, by imagining himself in a similar situation. If some
"Spectators"74 are "pleas'd" and present on the scene, Thomson, as well, is moved by his own delineation of the "sprightly Youth" (1244, 1256). Thomson appears inspired and even sexually aroused by the youthful figure (and, in this light, Thomson appears, himself, a prototype of both Damon and Musidora). Yet, in this regard, he also appears a jealous boaster. Thomson, rather than considering how he might behave in reaction to the
"Summer-Heats" of which the water is "kind Refresher" (1258) (already a darker version of the milder "Beam" of the swimmer), considers himself "weak-shivering" at the edge of the pool when "cold Winter keens the brightening Flood" (1260, 1259). Such self- conscious irony has its merits. Quite often able to consider and to treat with good humour both his faults and his desires, Thomson demands that his readers gauge a difference between the lithe, "pure" youth and himself (notably, Thomson appears rather portly in
A coy reference to Addison, perhaps. 75 For Thomson's "dabbling in the illicit" and his sexual self-presentation in the letters, see Turner 19-20 and 36n44. See also LD 65, 151. 208 most of his portraits),76 and between the youth's environment, and his own, darker one
(1256, 1268). In so doing, Thomson emphasizes the importance of acknowledging and putting aside one's fancied fears in pursuit of virtue, the "purest Exercise of Health"
(1256). Thus, Thomson allies himself with the swimmer. Indeed, this is not so much an egoistic triumph as a means of considering the importance of the choices made in milder times and the manner in which they prepare one for more difficult times.
To espouse the employment of the imagination in cultivating a consistently virtuous response to changes in nature and society, Thomson presents the swimmer's seemingly pleasurable pursuits and trivial challenges as exercises which enable one to combat darker fancies in trying times. As Lethbridge implies in her suggestion that
Thomson wants to "habituate reader response to virtuous conduct,"77 Thomson wants to habituate the "Humour" of the "sprightly Youth" in his own body and mind, and in the minds of his readers by refraining the swimmer's youthful, fanciful abandon as a kind of unwitting "Exercise of Health" on the part of the swimmer which prepares him to combat future violence (1254, 1244, 1257). Thomson claims that exercise is necessary in order to enable oneself to "redouble" "Life" and, hence, to guard against "the swift Illapse / Of
Accident disastrous" (1261, 1262-3). This, indeed, is a return to the "anxious eye"78 with which he rendered the storm and Amelia's instant fate, (an anxiety never completely dropped in his work on the lithe swimmer's dip into the flood). Here, in contrast with the swimmer's cheerful environs, Thomson discusses the plausible return of violence in nature, the spark the tempest waked. Yet in so doing, he suggests his own ability and the
76 Aside from the very handsome, well-proportioned portrait of Thomson by William Aikman (Edinburgh University Library), those of Stephen Slaughter (Art Gallery, Leicester) and J. Patoun (National Portrait Gallery) delineate a portly figure (Reproduced in Douglas Grant, James Thomson). 77 Defence 154. 78 Parker 156 (in 156-73). ability of his readers, no matter their stature or the clime, to cultivate a power within the body which fights off the "swift Illapse" in the outside world, and more importantly, to cultivate a powerful and upright imagination which fights off the assaults of darker and false fancies, the "swift Illapse" within (1262).
If this is a lesson in "virtuous restraint," as Lethbridge argues, it is an active and energetic battle between imagination in association with faith and order and a blocking, vicious fancy associated with despair and natural decline which requires a substantial
"redoubling" to overturn (1261). And Thomson proves the swimmer's milder summer exercise vital in combating the elements by shifting from his brief but engaging focus on his own body to a consideration of the youthful "Roman arms" of the past, or, Caesar and the youths of the Roman military who learned "while tender," to "Knit" their "Limbs" into "Force" so as to "subdue the Wave" (1263-6). Johnson defines "Illapse" first as the
"gradual emission or entrance of one thing into another." And, in his second sense of the term as a "sudden attack: casual coming," Johnson cites Thomson's lines on "Illapse."81
In the poem, Thomson reframes or reorients the swimmer's swimming, his seeming abandon and good humour (which relates to Johnson's first sense of "Illapse") as martial preparation for the "sudden attack" which comes as if out of nowhere and might not be seen, like Amelia's lightning bolt ("Illapse" in Johnson's second sense). In so doing, he demands that one view the previous or formative scene of seeming passivity or ease as a moment of "agency and control,"82 as the triumph of virtuous fancy over a vicious one.
And he espouses the repeated exercise of this power to promote the "active agency and
79 Defence 153-4. 80 SEA 356n 1264-8. 81 "Illapse," DEL. 82 Defence 152. 210 control" of the mind in times of difficulty, the alliance of imagination and truth as a means of combating false, dark fancy or a dim internal view.
Sambrook argues that Thomson offered "unexpected - even quaint - support" of the "ideal of mens sana in corpore sane" in the story of Damon and Musidora (1267-8).83
Even before this story, however, Thomson insists that even observation of the exercise of another enables one to cultivate one's own virtues. Both the lines on the "pleas'd
Spectators" and the lines on "Body's Purity," which close two successive verse paragraphs, affirm the virtues of observation, and hence, of imagination (1255-6, 1267-
8). And, with that concluding epigram, "Even, from the Body's Purity, the Mind /
Receives a secret sympathetic aid" (1267-8), Thomson prepares to face a more difficult natural environment or, perhaps, a storm within, by condoning the kind of spectatorship and imagination which appeared potentially criminal in the previous episodes. Here,
Thomson supports not only the exercise of the pure body as a model for one's own physical exercise, but also the mere observation of the "Body's Purity" as preparation for future storms (1267). Thus, by observing the swimmer's brief triumph of fancy and considering it in relation to the trials of Amelia, Thomson proposes that one might cultivate one's own virtues, if not through experience, then by considering another's experience. With sight and insight in regard to the heroism of another, one might prepare oneself or one's imagination for the onslaught of violence in the natural world and for the
"swift Illapse" of a darker fancy (1262).
"A healthy mind in a healthy body," cf. Juvenal, Satires x, 356 (cit. in SEA 356nl264-8). 211
1269-1370: "If Aught Profane to Love..."
The Damon and Musidora episode is more sensuous and more instructive when considered in comparison to the three scenes which precede it. With his most detailed delineations of the "convulsion" of human forms in the sequence, Thomson returns to the dynamism and drama of his thunderstorm. In so doing, he not only identifies the relationship between Damon and Musidora as one of "Love," he presents them in the process of cultivating that love. Still, since this couple, unlike Amelia and Celadon, is in the process of confirming their mutual affection, the quality of their passion is even more suspect. Thus, while Thomson attempts, throughout the scene, to delineate a love which is "'unlibidinous' (5.449), but unashamedly physical,"84 he faces an even more difficult challenge. He vies for a purity of "Love" in the body and mind which he must, nevertheless, constantly legitimize, and whose proof or potential proof derives, most importantly, from the scene's relation to its predecessors. Yet with this comparison,
Thomson espouses the employment of the imagination in identifying and cultivating a virtuous passion. He confirms the merits of his lovers and presents the "Love" of Damon and Musidora as an ideal.
In the first half of the scene (1269-1344), Thomson lauds the pair by considering their "Love" a virtue because it is neither "Prude" nor "Profane." Thomson's first attempt to vie for the merits of such a mean between extremes involves the decision making of Damon. Like Amelia and the swimmer, Damon must choose between two competing fancies or feelings, both of which, however, appear to be virtues. He must choose whether to follow his "Love" or to seek retirement. Having traveled to the stream in order to write songs gauged to cultivate Musidora's "infant Passion" for him (1284), a
84 Hagstrum, Sex and Sensibility 28. 212
"Flame" which has already been seen to "steal" from her "Eye" in "side-long Glances" like the swimmer's effused light (1277, 1279-81, 1255), Damon considers the competing sentiments which arise on the "lucky Chance" of having glimpsed Musidora (1286). One wonders, indeed, how much of a "lucky chance" this happens to be. Still, if Musidora, come "to bathe / Her fervent Limbs in the refreshing Stream," appears "fervent" (1291-
2), Damon appears a little more "confused" and "dubious," though nonetheless, aroused
(1293-4). His "sweet Confusion" and "dubious Flutterings" (1293, 1294) reveal a conflict between what appears to be his innate and elect refinement, the impulse to retire, and the
"Love" which drew him to the grove in the first place (1272).
To support Damon's cultivation of his passion, "Love," Thomson lauds Damon's decision to follow his initial desire as opposed to his blocking, yet "delicate Refinement":
A pure ingenuous Elegance of Soul,
A delicate Refinement, known to Few
Perplex'd his Breast, and urg'd him to retire.
But Love forbade. Ye Prudes in Virtue, say,
Say, ye severest, what would you have done? (1295-9)
Damon, like the swimmer, has a range of choices and a bit of leisure time in which to contemplate his actions. He struggles, however, in making his response to this array of competing desires, both of which appear to arise innately and both of which appear legitimate. Thomson's decision in the editions of the 1740's to remove his characterization of Damon as a stoic converted by Musidora's beauty85 suggests a decision to focus on Damon's sensibilities as endowed. He possesses a rare and innate
"Refinement" as opposed to professing a philosophy he might learn or assume (1296).
85SEA356nl269-1370. 213
The notion that "Refinement" is a "breast" "perplexing" quality, in light of Amelia's
"Bosom"-heaving "instant Fate," and in light of its "purity," makes Damon's fancied retirement appear, at first, an apt fancy (1295-7, 1195-1200). "Love," however, also appears a parental or blocking figure in its "forbidding" him to move (1298). Thus,
Thomson inspires comparison of Damon's refinement and his love. And, in so doing, he questions the rarity and nobility of the "Love" which, like Amelia and the swimmer,
Damon pursues (1295).
The only way to confirm the "ingenuous" quality of Damon's "Love" is to ensure that this "Love" is both properly expressed and properly returned. And Thomson uses an apostrophe to the prude in virtue to present Damon's response to Musidora as evidence of such superiority of passion. For Thomson, prudishness in "Virtue" (if not Damon's refined "delicacy") becomes an unnecessary and unrealistic restraint, while "Virtue" itself becomes a flexible term, as likely to be lowered, however, as elevated (1298-9). In order to champion Damon's superior passion, Thomson attempts to draw out his readers, too, suggesting that they identify their own similarity with Damon, their own propensity to "Love." He attempts to "convert" the "Prude" in his audience, themselves addressed in the second person, by suggesting that even the prude in "Virtue" would do none other than his hero (1298-9). Again, Damon's "Love" proves potentially common as opposed to refined. However, which of Thomson's readers would not think their love, and, hence,
Damon's love, uncommon or superior in comparison to the "Prudes?" Thomson's chastisement of the "Prude" presents his faith in a fusion of sex and friendship. Still, to support this faith as it applies to Damon and Musidora, Thomson suggests that his readers 214 must, again, treat the love scene as a test case for guilt. This time, they must compare their own sentiments with those of the pair.
Thomson again collapses distinctions between "optics" and "objects" to question the virtues of the pair. First, Thomson claims the paragon status of the beloved while making such election rather dubious. To establish that Damon's object of interest if not his own character is superior to the "Prudes in Virtue" (1298). Thomson's speaker shuns the "Prudes" in favour of a more attractive sight, Musidora. The speaker shifts his attention swiftly from the prudes to the paragon to signal Damon's high regard. Yet he does so in a manner in which a person would shun someone socially, or out of disregard, as if they did not exist. The speaker leaves off with his apostrophe to the prudes by re directing his attention to Musidora as the superior object of his eye, or of Damon's:
"Meantime, this fairer nymph [...]" (1300). Thus, Musidora appears not only more virtuous or beautiful than the prudes, she beats all of the nymphs that "ever blest /
Arcadian Stream" (1300-1). Thomson's praise of Musidora functions as a defence of
"Virtue" superior to a restraining "Prude"-ness. Still, the speaker's rather swift and shocking disregard of the "Prudes" in lieu of the sight of the maiden, matched with such hyperbole, makes such virtue questionable.
Thomson also blends Musidora's status as a paragon of beauty with Damon's status as a paragon of sexual desire or arousal. And this makes for rather dubious proof of a superior "Love" in either. Having acclaimed her Arcadian virtues, Thomson focuses on
Musidora's apparent unwillingness for anyone to view her private bath as she scans her
"timid Eye around / The Banks" (1301-2). And it appears as if Thomson will sustain his assessment of Musidora's paragon status in his exclamation, 215
Ah then! Not Paris on the piny Top
Of Ida panted stronger, when aside
The Rival-Goddesses the Veil divine
Cast unconfirm'd, and give him all their Charms,
Than, DAMON, thou; as from the snowy Leg
And slender Foot, th'inverted Silk she drew;
As the soft Touch dissolv'd the virgin Zone;
And thro' the parting Robe, th'alternate Breast,
With Youth wild-throbbing, on thy lawless Gaze
In full Luxuriance rose. (1304-13)
Considering her position at the edge of the water, and the speaker's desire to boast about
Musidora's virtues, it is at least possible that Thomson will compare Musidora to "Paris on the piny Top / Of Ida" (1304-5). However, Musidora's failed attempt to detect an intruder melds into Thomson's consideration of Damon's equal status as a paragon. As such, Thomson makes Musidora's virtue questionable, or at least, the value of his praise becomes questionable.
Thomson's comparison of Damon and Paris, likewise, underscores the potential vice of Damon just as the speaker appears to confirm his virtues. Like Paris on the "piny
Top," Thomson sees Damon as equal if not superior to Paris, whose vices, certainly, might equal if not outweigh his charms (1304). Here, Thomson recreates the Judgment of
Paris, the moment in which Paris selects between Hero, Aphrodite, and Athena, those goddesses attempting to bribe him into bestowing the golden apple. This, too, is a potential "vice," in that the hero is taking a bribe, a bribe which anticipates even more 216 chaos, the theft of Helen. And, with the "piny Top," which suggests the arousal of both men in the sight of such beauty, Thomson recalls the last mountain scene in the poem, the scene of the ball-lightning and its radiance in the landscape, the extension of the thunderstorm. This, too, is representative of sexual climax, but it is one whose violence can hardly be dismissed as pleasant, particularly in consideration of Amelia's tragic devastation by lightning. Thus, Damon appears a potential criminal, just as the speaker confirms his virtues. Still, in so doing, Thomson makes for a great deal of anticipation in terms of what will appear in Damon's perspective, and in terms of the potential "theft" to come.
Thomson sustains his slim divide between subject and object by considering the effects of Musidora's appearance upon Damon just as he delineates her most delicate features. Because he stops to address "DAMON, thou;" (1308) and because of his use of a semi-colon before describing Musidora's charms, it is not clear, at first, that Thomson means to sustain his Damon-Paris metaphor by cataloguing the superior charms of
Musidora as they affect and arouse Damon. Rather, one might assume that the poet was about to begin yet another simile, comparing either Damon or Musidora, in turn, to yet another paragon. Here, however, Thomson sustains his comparison of Damon and Paris by considering a difference between the women in their view. Thomson delineates
Musidora as the sole object of Damon's gaze ("th'inverted silk she drew," 1309ff.) in opposition to Paris in his choice of three. This marks a change for Thomson, too, and an important one, as the stoical Damon chose Musidora from three goddesses (Sacharissa,
Amoret, and Musidora: "th'inverted silk they drew," 1009ff.) who were part of the scene 217 in the poems of the 1730's.86 In the revisions of the 1740's, however, Thomson makes a distinction between the view in front of Damon (a single beauty) and that in front of Paris
(three goddesses). Thus, Thomson makes his catalogue of Musidora's "parts" an ostensibly "individual" blazon. Whether this makes Damon's virtue superior, however, remains questionable. It does, however, intensify the anticipation of the vision of the maiden and her charms.
Before we consider the "virgin zone" and the "Youth-wild throbbing," however, it is necessary to consider the manner in which Thomson appears to revoke his license of observation from the previous scene (1310, 1312). Indeed, the question of providence has already arisen. The "lucky chance" of this meeting might prove nothing other than a plan on the part of Damon, a plan which might even be condoned by the "Passion"-emanating
Musidora (1286, 1284-5). However, with the maid's glances, Thomson appears to revoke, or at least, to shed some doubt about the propriety of his license of observation as it applies to this scene. The swimmer, after all, heads for the "well-known Pool" with no reservations about the "Pleas'd Spectators round" (1245, 1256) whereas Musidora's
"timid Eye" scans the "Banks" of the sheltered spot so as to disregard such glances
(1301-2). And, just before his delineation of the body of Musidora, Thomson addresses
"DAMON, thou;" involving his readers, too, in the theft of Musidora's form (1308). Each of us becomes a Damon for a moment, a paragon, then, though perhaps not a paragon of virtue. If this new scene prompts re-consideration, then, of the free and easy observation only recently extolled, Thomson does so to raise questions about Damon's propriety as a suitable observer of or mate for Musidora. Thus, Thomson makes his rendering of the
86 SEA pp. 120-121,11. 980-1037 [cit. 1730 quarto (as ff.tol738)]. The change was an important one for Thomson and his publishers, as the engraved Kent-Fourdrinier plate from 1738 had to be altered, SEA lxx. 218 woman's body and the man's arousal more sensuous because of the potential licentiousness of everyone's gaze.
Thomson's rendering of Musidora's striptease and Damon's arousal sheds doubt upon the virtue of their love. And Thomson emphasizes that this scene borders upon the libidinous because his description of the convulsive human form becomes more extensive and detailed, marking a return, in a sense, to the vivid description of the thunderstorm. In the previous scene, the youth, whose clothing is not regarded, wavers momentarily on the edge of the pool before diving in. Musidora, however, trembles on the brink for some time as she takes off her clothes. And Thomson does not forget to recall the "Spark the
Tempest wak'd" in Musidora, either (1241). The stockings start to drop, the robe begins to part, and, most notably, Musidora's "virgin zone," is "dissolv'd," by "the soft Touch"
(1310). Thomson grants a more detailed and dynamic view of Musidora than Amelia or the swimmer, here.
Still, to the wonder and excitement of all of her spectators, Musidora's state of undress remains debatable. A "zone," according to Johnson, can be identified as a
"girdle," and thus, as anything encircling the waist which is tied or buckled, or, as an enclosure or circumference. It is also a "division of the earth" such as the "torrid zone" which Thomson describes earlier in the season, or a "circuit; circumference."87 Thus,
Thomson presents delightful ambiguity in describing either the dissolving of a belt or the dissolving of a part of the body. Thomson leaves the mortal hand or eye performing this dissolving "Touch" in question, too (1310). For here, "Touch" refers to the "Touch" of
Musidora as well as to the glances and the desires of Damon, the speaker, and the audience. This is the "Touch," also, of that "Magazine of Fate," which might plausibly
87 "Zone" and "Girdle," DEL. spark a tempest not only in the Maiden herself, but also in Damon, in the speaker, and, likely, those who read along (1112-13).
Thomson's references to both the "Touch" and to the "Youth wild-throbbing" make the event more sensuous while making the virtues of the lovers questionable (1310,
1312). As it turns out, Musidora's "ectoplasmic drapery" (a phrase Sambrook employs to describe a "streamer" on the engraved plate of the scene) is not parted until a tasteful semi-colon, at which time the "th'alternate Breast" appears more obvious, yet still
"throbbing" in and out of perspective (1310-11). Thomson collapses optics and objects in his description of this "Youth wild-throbbing" to sustain such delightful indecision
(1312). As Turner argues of a passage he considers "easily transprosed [sic] into Fanny
Hill's narrative", this "youth wild-throbbing, [...] floats ambiguously between the observer and the bodies observed."89 The "Youth" is either Damon or Musidora (1312).
As such, Thomson presents a shared or mutual arousal. Still, one must wonder if this passion is as virtuous as that of Milton's pair in Eden.
The second stage of the striptease reorients Musidora's "Touch" as the work of
"Nature" itself, thus substantiating the virtue or quality of Amelia's ardour, if not that of
Damon. The speaker questions the daring of Damon to heed to his forbidding "Love" and to risk the distraction of his very "Soul:"
But, desperate Youth,
How durst thou risque the Soul-distracting View;
As from her naked Limbs, of glowing White,
Harmonious swell'd by Nature's finest Hand,
SEA Ixx. Turner 26. In Folds loose-floating fell the fainter Lawn;
And fair-expos'd she stood, shrunk from herself,
With Fancy blushing, at the doubtful Breeze
Alarm'd, and starting like the fearful Fawn? (1313-20)
The speaker plays the role of inspiring devil or restraining angel as opposed to Damon's double. However, in this light, he appears involved and, likewise, morally ambiguous.
The description of Musidora's exposed body remains somewhat less detailed than in the first throes of her striptease. Her body appears more visible than either that of Amelia or the swimmer in Thomson's registration of her shift from "White" limbs to "blushing"
(1315, 1319). However, because he is interested in the "distraction" of Damon's "Soul" as a reprise of Damon's initial decision-making on the brink, Thomson leaves Musidora's figure up to the reader's own "Fancy," momentarily, as he does not re-visit the "breasts" or the "virgin zone" (1314, 1319, 1310-11).
Having noted Damon's persistence in pursuing his love, however, Thomson confirms Musidora's virtue by suggesting that Musidora's "Touch" is created in her or endowed by "Nature" (1310, 1316). If Musidora's hand touches her robes and initially reveals the "virgin zone," it is nature whose "finest Hand" both "swells" or creates
Musidora, and whose "swelling" finally makes Musidora's "fainter lawn" fall off (1315-
17). As with Celadon's "void Embrace" which proves that he has not touched Amelia at all (1214), Thomson reveals that Musidora, up until this point, has not yet been fully
"expos'd" (1318). If this does not entirely confirm Damon's innocence in the matter,
Thomson signals that Musidora's chief motive, "Love," and its associated "Touch" are endowed virtues, granted by a superior power. For, in this moment, he makes a point of 221 exposing her by attributing this delightful labour to nature itself. Thus, Thomson returns, with "Alarm" and with irony, to confirm his sense of order in nature and in the moral character or virtue of that ordering power as it relates to his female figure (1320).
Particularly when considered in reference to the previous scenes, Thomson presents Musidora's "Alarm" and her response to that alarm as a virtuous "Fancy" and a courageous response (1319-20). Musidora's instinctive "starting" and "shrinking" at the
"breeze" in "Alarm," that pose which became a popular subject for painters,90 registers her maiden-like modesty (1318-20). The shifting breeze leads Musidora to "Fancy" the presence of danger and to shield herself (1319). Here, Musidora's fancied alarm, proves, like Amelia's (and unlike the swimmer's) both apt and substantial, in that she fancies the presence of an intruder or a threat, whom Thomson's readers can identify as Damon.
Still, Musidora persists, like the swimmer before her, pursuing the pleasure of the day.
Additionally, in reference to the swimming scene, Thomson suggests that Musidora's trembling like a startled and "fearful Fawn" and her ability to set aside her "Alarm" in taking the plunge make her the performer of exercises which might enable her to recover from more dire circumstances later on (1320). And indeed, Thomson confirms her ability to do so.
In the water, Thomson confirms Musidora's virtue by reprising not only the climax of the storm in her strokes but also the derivation of the storm, its "secret" and
"wrathful" generation in her body's effusions (1103-16). Musidora's swim differs from the first swimming scene in terms of Thomson's restrained realism and in terms of his employment of light imagery:
90 William Etty, Musidora: The Bather 'At the Doubtful Breeze Alarmed' (1846), Tate Gallery, London; Thomas Gainsborough, Musidora (1780-8), Tate Gallery, London; Thomas Sully, Musidora (1813-35), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. 222
Then to the Flood she rush'd; the parted Flood
Its lovely Guest with closing Waves receiv'd;
And every Beauty softening, every Grace
Flushing anew, a mellow Luster shed:
As shines the Lily thro' the crystal mild;
Or as the Rose amid the Morning Dew,
Fresh from Aurora's Hand, more sweetly glows.
While thus she wanton'd, now beneath the Wave
But ill-conceal'd; and now with streaming Locks,
That half embrac'd Her in a humid Veil,
Rising again, the latent DAMON drew
Such madning Draughts of Beauty to the Soul,
As for a while o'erwhelm'd his raptur'd Thought
With Luxury too-daring. (1321-34)
While Thomson provides more physical detail than he did with the male swimmer in his description of her body above water, and while Thomson denotes she is "ill-conceal'd,"
Musidora's body is less visible in the water (1229). Still, with this concealment,
Thomson expresses anxieties on Musidora's behalf which are more extensive than those he raises on behalf of the male swimmer. Here, the flood which parts for Musidora, recalling Adam's acceptance of Eve into his arms in Milton,91 appears potentially destructive in its very regard, in its parting as if to engulf the maid completely. And, with this threatened violence or theft, Thomson confirms the potential threat lurking in the
91 Paradise Lost IV. 307-11 (qtd. in Defence 151). distance, his Damon, and indeed, his own threatening desire. Unlike the swimmer, it appears as if Musidora has reason to fear.
With the "humid Veil" that surrounds Musidora's body during her swim and from which she rises, Thomson confirms the maid's merits while deeming Damon's glancing or distraction potentially base, dire, and destructive (1330). Like the swimmer, Musidora appears a gem in the water. However, her sides do not reflect the light of the sun. Rather, her body refracts its light. Her "Luster" shines as a "Lily" through a "Crystal," and then as a "Rose" in the "Morning Dew," And Thomson signifies Musidora's paragon status with the "choice" of the "Hand" of "Aurora" in her hue (1325-7). However, she has a surrounding veil of humidity. Thus, Thomson's light effects have as much to do with the gases ready to be ignited by the touch etherial at the outset of the storm as with the gems of early summer. Still, as with the swimmer's milder beam, Musidora's "Luster" is
"mellow" (1324). And what was a pollution that began to signal the onslaught of a violent storm appears, here, towards the end of the swim, a vibrancy associated with the lady's "Rising again" (1331). Her ability to rise from the waves and from her tangle of hair suggests, for Thomson, a blessed recovery of a body which might, indeed, have remained buried in the welcoming waves, though its inmate effusions escape. Musidora, is the human example of a potentially violent sensuality proven virtuous. Yet Thomson continues to wonder about the quality of the "Love" available to Musidora in return. For, as with the touch etherial, Musidora's sports prompt another wave of passion in the observing Damon.
Thomson employs one final collapse of perspective to argue the merits of
Damon's decision to pursue or to cultivate his "Love." For while Musidora appears ' Rising again from the waves, Thomson suggests that he is describing Damon's "Rising again," too (1331). However, Damon's "Rising," at first, appears less than commendable. He takes in "Such madning Draughts of Beauty to the Soul / As for a while o'erwhelm'd his raptur'd Thought / With Luxury too Daring" (1332-5). Here, it appears as if Damon's "Daring" might get the better of him, as the tragic, unrequited lovers of "Spring." Thomson's lessons on the importance of fending against a dark fancy in the previous scene also cast doubt upon the virtue of Damon's "luxury too daring" (1335).93 And Thomson underscores this doubt by separating himself and his readers from "Damon, thou" (1308). He presents the "Rising again" of "the latent
DAMON," as a return to the third person (1331).
Nonetheless, Thomson proves Damon's "Love" both "ingenuous" and refined
(1295-6), for such "Love" proves the mean between extremes of prudishness and profanity. Thomson licenses Damon's observation of Musidora and lauds Damon's cultivation of his passion, "Love," by denying the possibility of "profanity" in "Love":
Check'd, at last,
By Love's respectful Modesty, he deem'd
The Theft profane, if Aught profane to Love
Can e'er be deem'd, and struggling from the Shade,
With headlong Hurry fled: but first these Lines, (1334-8)
Thomson's speaker is less concerned with or impressed by Damon's restraint than with the perceived "profanity" of Damon's pleasure and abandon, the cultivation of his
"Love" through his observation of Musidora's taking pleasure in the day (1336). While
92 "Spring" 983-1112. 93 See also the revelry and the fog in "Autumn" 502-609 and 706-72, respectively. Damon himself might "deem" his "Theft profane," thus showing the apparent "restraint" which Lethbridge argues is the aim of Thomson's sequence,94 the speaker of the poem comes to Damon's aid by wondering about the propriety of considering "Love," or, at least, Damon's "Love," "profane" at all (1336). Here, Thomson approaches his question of prude-ness in virtue from the other side of the spectrum, substantiating both love and virtue not in Damon's restraint, his "checking" himself, but in his recent abandon, his observation of and indulgence in the sight of the lithe, pure body of Musidora (1334).
Thus, Damon's inability to fully leave the "Shade," his inability to restrain himself for more than a moment, appears legitimate (1447). Damon's "Headlong Hurry," his "struggling from the Shade" suggests flight (1337-8). However, the heroic Damon does not fly far. And his letter to Musidora explains his Celadon-like care: he means to
"guard thy Haunt" from the "vagrant Foot, / And each licentious Eye" (1342-4). Thus,
Thomson proves Damon more virtuous than "Man." He reveals Damon's desire to keep or to protect Musidora from harm which proves less a mode of self-restraint than a mode of restricting others from observing her "virgin zone" (1310). Additionally, Damon's letter reminds Thomson's readers that they are potentially "licentious" and "vagrant" interlopers (1343-4). And, as such, Thomson begins to relegate his lovers to a "sensory elite." However, particularly with his previous license of observation in mind, and having escaped from the entrapment of the gaze of lover, Damon, himself, Thomson makes such observation, likewise, more of an exercise in cultivating virtue than a vice.
The storm of "Love," indeed, keeps storming, particularly in Musidora. With
Musidora's second series of convulsions (1344-70), Thomson confirms the maid's superiority of virtue in her own right while confirming the superiority of Damon in
94 Defence 153. Musidora's eyes. In so doing, Thomson identifies a "correspondence" between the pair similar to that of Amelia and Celadon, though with more promising results. Thomson confirms Musidora's virtue in her response to a moment of paralyzing fear:
With wild Surprize,
As if to Marble struck, devoid of Sense,
A stupid Moment motionless she stood:
So stands the Statue that enchants the World,
So bending tires to veil the matchless Boast,
The mingled Beauties of exulting Greece.
Recovering, swift she flew to find those Robes
Which blissful Eden knew not; and, array'd
In careless Haste, th'alarming Paper snatch'd. (1344-52)
Thomson renders Musidora's apparent "statue-ization" not in response to her act of reading the letter or note written by Damon, but as a response to her glimpsing the letter fluttering towards the banks. This makes Thomson's speaker and his readers, at first, privy to information to which Musidora is not. Yet this offers proof of Musidora's virtue or innocence. For, after long delay, Thomson confirms that Musidora, indeed, was not aware of anyone else's presence on the banks.
With Musidora's moment of "frozen agency" and her release from this posture,
Thomson re-confirms the lady's virtue. Thomson's comparison of Musidora, who
"enchants the world" in her frozen posture (1343), and the "Venus di Medici," to whom he refers in a rare note in the text, helps him to underscore Musidora's graces. The
Thomson's note, SEA 122nl347. 227
Venus of Medici was, indeed, the standard of all beauties of the period,96 as evidenced, here, in Thomson's consideration of Musidora's beauty in relation to the "mingled beauties" of "Greece" (1349). And the pose taken by the statue of the Venus di Medici, notably, compares to Musidora's earlier postures, not only her "Touch" but also her momentary fears by the side of the water. For, with one hand, the Venus gestures towards her breast, while her other hand covers and almost touches her "virgin zone" (1310).
With his comparison, Thomson confirms that in this moment of "frozen agency," as in her struggles on the brink of the water in response to the wind, Musidora's fancied fears might, indeed, be well-founded. For indeed, there remains an intruder in the distance, an intruder of whose identity she remains unaware. And Musidora's second rally proves another triumph over her fancied fears, though these fancies are not false fancies, as with the swimmer, but potentially verifiable or real threats to her person, as with Amelia.
Thus, Thomson champions Musidora's ability to overcome her dim or dark fancies from a renewed perspective, from outside of the gaze of the lover Damon. In the time between Damon's throwing his letter upon the banks with a "trembling Hand"
(1340) and Musidora's "snatching" of that "paper" (1352), Thomson presents Musidora
"as if a statue but not "Devoid of Sense" for long (1345). Her swift production of those
"robes" not present in "blissful Eden" signals her potential to rally herself from her initial fear (1350-1). With her realization that she is not in "Eden" Thomson shows that
Musidora, too, appears to restrain herself as Damon restrains or "checks" himself after
"Rising again" and gazing, with "luxury too daring" for a while (1331-4). Yet, Thomson shows that the need for further restraint, represented by those "Robes," as with the need to think of Damon's previous pleasures as "profane," is unnecessary (1350, 1336).
96SEA357nl373. Thomson returns Musidora and Damon to a "sensory elite" and proves Damon's love the only appropriate love for Musidora (and vice versa) by referring, one final time, to a providential "Hand." Musidora's "Terrors" vanish because she recognizes Damon's penmanship:
But, when her DAMON'S well-known Hand she saw,
Her Terrors vanish'd, and a softer Train
Of mixt Emotions, hard to be describ'd,
Her sudden Bosom seiz'd: Shame void of Guilt,
The charming Blush of Innocence, Esteem
And Admiration of her Lover's Flame,
By Modesty exalted. Even a Sense
Of self-approving Beauty stole across
Her busy Thought. At length, a tender Calm
Hush'd by Degrees the Tumult of her Soul; (1353-62)
Here, the "Hand" of Damon compares to the "Hand" in the natural world which, in the previous sermon ushered in the "calm" after the violent storm (1253, 1239). And, of course, in this scene, the "Hand" has already endowed Musidora with beauty and with life. Confirming the benevolent and ordering power in nature, Thomson confirms the benevolence and virtue of the lovers. For in realizing the hidden observer by his penmanship, Musidora approves of Damon's glance as the only suitable glance upon her person. In so doing, the overall sense of impropriety or profanity vanishes, and "self- approving Beauty" steals across her "Thought," ushering in a new, if only temporary
"Calm" (1360-61). Thus, Thomson presents the possibility of a love that is neither prude 229 nor profane. However, he only makes the virtue of this sentiment possible in that the love is mutual or returned, proving the couple, indeed, a "sensory elite." Musidora's realization condones Damon's observation while, simultaneously revoking all others.
With this, too, Thomson confirms the audience's own potential impropriety in looking on. For, while Thomson's readers have been privy to the contents to the letter before
Musidora reads the words, the hand she recognizes is not something Thomson's audience would be able to see.
While Thomson returns Damon and Musidora to the realms of the sensory elite with Musidora's sight of the hand on the page, he does not, finally, limit the observation of the readers rendered lawless and "vagrant" in Damon's prose and in Musidora's discriminating eye (1343). Thomson remains quite willing to offer a scandalous glimpse of Musidora's frame in its final series of convulsions. And, in so doing, he confirms that the couple's virtuous love is inclusive of sensuality. Musidora's "Terrors" may "vanish" upon seeing and approving of Damon's "Hand" (1353-4). Thomson, however, delineates a "softer" convulsion. Like Amelia, Musidora's "Bosom" seizes. However, this seizure signals delight (1356). Musidora's realization of her "shame Void of guilt," as
Lethbridge suggests, recalls the "Void" in Celadon's arms,97 his loss of his virtuous partner (1356, 1214). Thus, Musidora's self-conscious delight in her own virtue and in that of her lover reprises and confirms the confidence of Amelia, her love and confidence in her partner and in heaven as virtuous impulse. Indeed, Musidora becomes aware and approves of the "Flame" of her lover as if she had sat listening to Thomson's sermon on the "Spark the Tempest waked" and realized it as "Love" (1358, 1241).
Defence 152. The virtuous love of Damon and Musidora appears so ideal, so unlikely that
Thomson appears to delay their union. Musidora and Damon do not meet or marry.
Rather, Thomson leaves the now well-known pool by remarking upon the lovers' potential for a future union and for future arousal. Musidora's own hand-carved motto appears on the local tree:
'Dear Youth! Sole Judge of what these Verses mean,
'By Fortune too much favour'd, but by Love,
'Alas! Not favour'd less, be still as now
'Discreet: the Time may come you need not fly.'(1367-70)
How swiftly or hurriedly one might carve such an extensive motto with a "silvan pen"
(1364) has been remarked upon by Sambrook as "agreeable nonsense."98 Yet such an effort underscores Musidora's active cultivation of her impulses in the form of seduction.
She addresses her "Love" with the "silvan pen," acting deliberately, encouraging
Damon's advances. Lethbridge suggests that Musidora's promise is engaging and worthwhile because Musidora promises it "only if his passions are controlled."99 Yet
Musidora's inscribed imperative of "discretion" on the local tree promises additional abandon and license, at least among the pair (1370). Indeed, Thomson's last, best motto in the sequence functions as an open invitation for more intrigue. Damon, after all, is already back upon the scene within minutes, "kissing" the inscription (or his maid's
"Hand") with "weeping Joy" (1363,1366).
Such innuendo is meant to inspire a similar love among Thomson's readers, too.
For, here, Thomson's emphasis on the lovers' mutual esteem, their sensory elitism, does
SEA 357nl364. Defence 153. 231 not necessarily isolate or alienate Thomson's speaker or his readers. Rather, Thomson presents the possibility of a similar exclusive "Fortune" and "favour" among his audience
(1368-9). He considers the possibility of such companionship and virtuous love to exist on a wider scale. The inscription, after all, is permanent and public. The reader must, as well, attempt to identify and to cultivate their "Love" and to find it in an equal partner.
And, in the following scene, Thomson invites his own, long-sought-after "Amanda"100 for a walk (1401).
Thus, Thomson's final "love story" is more sensuous and more instructive because of its place in the sequence. The great show of nature which begins Thomson's sequence demands an attention to the virtue of the impulses and actions of men and women. And Thomson, like Pope, employs natural phenomena in his espousal of the employment of the imagination in identifying and cultivating "Love." Having considered the potential baseness or commonality of this ardour, Thomson relegates his ideal "Love" to an ideal pair. It may be likely that nature or heaven endows this sentiment in different ways among different people, in ways more or less moral or virtuous. And "Love," in its highest form is difficult if not impossible to come by, as Thomson requires not only an individual but a shared attention to and cultivation of a "Spark" within (1241). Yet while this cultivation might prove dangerous, and while nature or heaven might put out that
"Spark" before it is properly attended to, Thomson, like Pope, approves of the attempt to cultivate virtuous love despite the considerable propensity for "Elapse" in nature and imagination (1262).
1U0 Elizabeth Young, who refused Thomson's proposal in 1743. SEA 332n483; LD 146-61, 164-71, 175-7, 182-4. V. "WINTER": THE IMAGINATION OF THOMSON'S SWAIN
If the lesson of the "Summer" sequence is to employ the imagination so as to identify and cultivate the kind of virtuous "Love" meant to be shared with an ideal partner, the lesson of "Winter" is the employment of the imagination in cultivating the kind of sympathy or fellow feeling which effects social and political change. Somewhat surprisingly, Thomson chooses not from poets, philosophers, or Whig-patriots1 to teach this lesson but from among his rustics. In The Seasons, the poet's desire for social and political change most often stems from his admiration of poets, philosophers, and patriots whose "educated" minds he tends to laud in opposition to the false fancies of
"uneducated" rustics. When Thomson compares the educated and uneducated fancy directly, his educated men respond to natural phenomena by appreciating the order and benevolence of the creation, while the uneducated rural and rustic folk respond with superstition and terror.
Still, when Thomson considers the philosophic or educated imagination superior to the uneducated fancy in The Seasons, he often admires the dynamism of the latter. In his account of the swain's pursuit of the end of the rainbow in "Spring," for instance, or in his survey of the reaction of the "sequacious Herd" to a "Summer" comet,3 Thomson appears interested in the response of the uneducated fancy to natural phenomena. While
1 For Thomson's politics see Michael Cohen, "The Whig Sublime and James Thomson," English Language Notes 24.1 (Sept 1986) 27-35; Douglas Grant, James Thomson: Poet of The Seasons; Dustin Griffin, "James Thomson: 'to mix the Patriot's with the Poet's Flame,'" Patriotism and Poetry in Eighteenth-Century Britain (New York: Cambridge, 2001) 74-97; William Levine, "Collins, Thomson, and the Whig Progress of Liberty," SEL 34.3 (Summer 1994) 553-77; A. D. McKillop, The Background of Thomson's Seasons; James Sambrook, James Thomson (1700-1748): A Life; Mary Jane Scott, James Thomson, Anglo-Scot; Philip Ronald Stormer, "Holding 'High Converse with the Mighty Dead': Morality and Politics in James Thomson's 'Winter,'" English Language Notes 29.3 (Mar 1992) 27-40; Richard Terry ed., James Thomson: Essays for the Tercentenary (Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 2000). 2 Again, "imagination" and "fancy" interchangeable. SEA 223n459; Fairer 2-3. 3 "Spring" 208-17; "Summer" 1706-29; "Autumn" 1103-37; "Winter" 859-86. See also Conclusion.
232 233 he criticizes the fears of decay and decline associated with these forms of imagination4 in a manner similar to Pope in his criticism of the "wizard" and "poor men of pelf,"5
Thomson's enthusiastic description suggests, nonetheless, that he would like to harness such fervour and re-direct it.
Thomson's lovers in "Summer," though they are not necessarily the rural labourers or rustics he tends to consider in comparison with his sages, prove notable examples of those who respond to violence in nature with love and faith. And Thomson's lesson in companionate "Love," there, has social and political implications, particularly as this relates to an individual's choice of a partner in marriage. In "Winter," Thomson further expands upon his interest in the "uneducated" fancy by pausing to admire the dynamic imagination of a dying swain. And he considers how this swain's brief display of fellow feeling might be brought to inspire social reform.
One of the aspects of "Winter" for which Thomson has been charged with inconsistency is the transition between his depiction of the death of the swain and his consideration of the need for social change in the lines that follow (276-321; 322-88). For example, arguing that Thomson "views nature as fearful only from moments on the way from description to theodicy," David R. Anderson asserts that the death of the swain "is not made part of the poem's discussion of the problem of evil; indeed, it is hardly discussed at all." And Tim Fulford considers the swain a "poetic example [...] in whom
Thomson has little interest other than in his emblematic role as the representative of
4 See 232n3 above, with the exception of "Winter" 859-886. 5 "Bathurst" 115-16, 136-46. See Chapter Three. 6 David R. Anderson, "Emotive Theodicy in The Seasons," Studies in Eighteenth Century Culture 12 (1983) 65. insignificant man and innocent rustic." John Goodridge, though with "reluctance," points to a similar divide.8
While the swain's example enables Thomson to teach charity and benevolence to an "insulated"9 audience, the swain is by no means insignificant, nor is he forgotten.
Here, I consider Thomson's emphasis upon the swain's imagination and his repeated reference to the swain in the sequence of poetry which follows. This sequence includes
Thomson's discussion of the need for social change and his further consideration of violent natural phenomena (276-321; 32-388 and 389-423 respectively). In the lines following the death scene, Thomson mourns the swain's loss, particularly the loss of his dynamic and ultimately "tender" imagination so as to espouse fellow feeling among his audience (308). He depicts, and, in so doing, dramatizes the reconciliation of extreme forms of violence in the natural world to suggest that while the swain's loss is unavoidable, one must employ one's sympathy as a means of inspiring and effecting social change whenever possible. Additionally, since Thomson refers to the swain in the remainder of the season, I pause, briefly, to consider some of these references. Over the course of the season, Thomson refers to the swain to teach fellow feeling, to identify a balance of extremes in nature, and to introduce and espouse the concept of individual,
"active Government" (950), a notion similar to Pope's "Good Sense."
The Swain's Imagination
In "Winter" Thomson surveys the death of a swain in a snowstorm so as to emphasize the swain's powerful imaginative faculties (276-321). He considers the swain's immersion in the storm, the moments leading up to his death by hypothermia,
7 Tim Fulford, Landscape. Liberty and Authority (New York: Cambridge UP, 1996) 24. 8 John Goodridge, Rural Life in Eighteenth-Century English Poetry 85. 9 Fulford 26. and the appearance of the corpse. This enables Thomson to describe what the swain imagines during his crisis, to identify which passions chiefly motivate the swain, and to express his own sympathy on behalf of the suffering subject. Throughout, Thomson admires the dynamism of the swain's imagination. And he lauds the sentiment which inspires such imagination, the swain's love of his home and family.
To emphasize that he means to consider the imagination of his swain, Thomson presents some initial confusion about the appearance of the landscape:
As thus the Snows arise; and foul, and fierce,
All Winter drives along the darken'd Air,
In his own loose-revolving Fields, the Swain
Disaster'd stands; sees other Hills ascend,
Of unknown joyless Brow; and other Scenes,
Of horrid Prospect, shag the trackless Plain:
Nor finds the River nor the Forest, hid
Beneath the formless Wild; but wanders on
From Hill to Dale, still more and more astray;
Impatient flouncing thro' the drifted Heaps,
Stung with the Thoughts of Home; (276-86)
Thomson expresses his own sympathy for the swain by revealing that the figure stands
"disaster'd" in "his own loose-revolving Fields" (278-9). This landscape appears a novel
landscape in the swain's eye. The "other Hills" and "other Scenes" that appear before
him are created by the snowfall, whereas the once-familiar "Forest" and "River" are
hidden by the snow (279-80, 282). As Ralph Cohen argues of the season, "Dislocation 236 leads to false forms, but it is a dislocation of the actual."10 While the landscape appears fanciful because of its motion and its newer "Heaps," Thomson presents a realistic setting
(285). Nonetheless, Thomson uses this "dislocation" to emphasize that he will be addressing the imagination of his subject.
Even before he considers the swain's fancy, Thomson seeks to understand the character or passion of the swain. The new "Hills" and "Prospect[s]" are "joyless" and
"horrid" (279-81). And, with both the swain's "impatien[ce]" and his "Disaster'd" stance,
Thomson intimates that the swain's flaws of character might be haste and excessive despair (279, 285). He then underscores the swain's despair:
the Thoughts of Home
Rush on his Nerves, and call their Vigour forth
In many a vain Attempt. How sinks his Soul!
What black Despair, what Horror fills his Heart!
When, for the dusky Spot which Fancy feign'd
His tufted Cottage rising thro' the Snow,
He meets the Roughness of the middle Waste,
Far from the Track, and blest Abode of Man;
While round him Night resistless closes fast,
And every Tempest, howling o'er his Head,
Renders the savage Wilderness more wild.
Then throng the busy Shapes into his Mind,
Of cover'd Pits, unfathomably deep,
A dire Descent! beyond the power of Frost;
10 Ralph Cohen, The Unfolding of the Seasons 262. 237
Of faithless Bogs; of Precipices huge,
Smooth'd up with Snow; and, what is Land unknown,
What Water, of the still unfrozen Spring,
In the loose Marsh or solitary Lake,
Where the fresh Fountain from the Bottom boils.
These check his fearful Steps; and down he sinks
Beneath the Shelter of the shapeless Drift, (286-306)
Indeed, this may be a case in which despair overwhelms rather than enlivens the imaginer. The swain's "Thoughts" of home affect his "Nerves" with "stinging" (286-7).
He is filled with "black Despair" and "Horror" in sight of the "savage Wilderness more wild" (289, 96).
Such despair is expressed in several scenes in The Seasons. The swain's "Horror" compares, for instance, with the "Horror" experienced by the "cruel Wretch" on a typical summer's day:
A Sight of Horror to the cruel Wretch,
Who all day long in sordid Pleasure roll'd,
Himself an useless Load, has squander'd vile,
Upon his scoundrel Train, what might have chear'd
A drooping Family of modest Worth.
But to the generous still-improving Mind, [.. .]u
Thomson's swain experiences a similar "Horror" to that of the "Wretch," here. However, the swain is not "cruel," nor is he proud or profligate. He is a rural labourer whose own family appears, fancifully, only moments later. Perhaps with his use of the term "Horror"
""Summer" 1636-1641. 238
Thomson implicitly compares the profligate of "Summer" and the labourer of "Winter" to laud the virtue of the latter. While not a man of a philosophic imagination, in any case,
Thomson's swain proves more like the "generous still-improving Mind" than the
"Wretch."
When Thomson describes the swain's fancies, he reveals that the swain's sentiments are upright sentiments. The swain longs for the comforts of "Home" (286).
Thus, when he looks out upon the scene, he uses his "Fancy" to envision a false home in the fresh snow hills. In the "dusky Spot" the swain's "Fancy feign'd / His tufted Cottage rising thro' the snow" (290-1). The swain's desire for the "tufted Cottage" is powerful
(291). He envisions the cottage where it does not exist, though the real cottage remains close by. Thus, Thomson recalls Addison's emphasis upon the ability of the person of
"Polite Imagination" to take pleasure in what is hidden or seemingly hidden from the scene. In his yearning for the comforts of home, the swain appears to exaggerate his despair, producing pain instead of Addisonian pleasure. Nonetheless, Thomson emphasizes the power of the swain to envision what is hidden beneath the snow and the association of that fancy with the swain's love and concern for "Home" (286).
While the swain returns to a darker mode of fancy, envisioning the potential dangers that lie beneath the surface of the snow and ice, his imagined dangers remain, at times, realistic or realizable concerns. In his struggle in the "middle Waste," the swain's
"Fancy" becomes prone to darkness or exaggeration (282, 290). The "busy Shapes" that come into his mind are "beyond the Power of Frost; / Of faithless Bogs; of Precipices huge" (297, 299-300). Thus, at points, the swain's vision is not "terribly realistic" but
Addison, Spectator no. 411, III, 538. See Introduction. 239
1 ^
"highly hyperbolic" as Lethbridge argues. Still, such fear is associated with the swain's care for his own life. And at least some of the swain's illusions correspond to the types of dangers one might actually encounter in a winter landscape. For example, the "still unfrozen Spring" is a likely hazard in a winter climate in which springs might not freeze completely (302).14
To laud the swain's persistence and his benevolence, Thomson presents a shift or return from dark fancy to the fancied "fires" of home (312). The swain's dark fancy is met or tempered by the "tender Anguish" associated with "Nature" (308). The swain sinks,
Thinking o'er all the Bitterness of Death,
Mix'd with the tender Anguish Nature shoots
Thro' the wrung Bosom of the dying Man,
His Wife, his Children, and his Friends unseen.
In vain for him th'officious Wife prepares
The Fire fair-blazing and the Vestment warm;
In vain his little Children, peeping out
Into the mingling Storm, demand their Sire
With Tears of artless Innocence. (307-15)
Thomson links "Nature" with the swain's more "tender" fancies, revealing the swain's perseverance, his attempt to slough off a darker sensibility (308). Here, "Nature" is human nature, what comes naturally to the mind. Yet it also appears an external force, a
"Defence 168. 14 It is common knowledge that springs, because of their action and their depth are less prone to freezing than other bodies of water of a similar width (ponds, for instance). However, they will freeze over in severe temperatures. 240 force which endows the swain with the "tender Anguish" that tempers his "Bitter" thoughts (308).
Interestingly, even as Thomson describes a man suffering because of a violent natural phenomenon, Thomson refers to "Nature" to emphasize the potential virtue at the root of the swain's reverie (308). Consequently, Thomson also emphasizes his own faith in the order of the creation and the benevolence of "Nature" in the midst of what appears to be a natural evil. This corresponds to Thomson's insistence, throughout the poem, upon the educated person's ability to imagine and to take pleasure in the order that exists in the natural world, a theory he quite often propounds in comparison to the ignorance and superstition of rural or rustic figures.15 It is possible to hypothesize that such
"Anguish" compounds both the swain's despair and Thomson's criticism of natural evil
(308). However, I would argue that despite Thomson's emphasis upon and indulgence in despair, his swain possesses a virtuous fancy. With the aid of "Nature," or, by responding intuitively, the swain transforms his dark fancy into a vision of the comforts and "tender" cares of home. While this produces or compounds his despair, it nonetheless prompts an association with what is good and desirable.
Thomson admires the swain's "tender" imagination even as this contributes to his
"black despair" (308). While the swain's wife, children and friends remain "unseen," they affect his "bosom" (310, 309). And the swain16 proceeds to envision what cannot be
1 7 seen. In those lines dubbed the "reverse homecoming" by John Goodridge, the wife prepares both "Fire" and "Vestment warm," as the children appear "peeping out / Into the mingling Storm, demanding] their Sire, / With tears of artless Innocence" (311-15). The 15 "Summer" 1706-29 and "Autumn" 1115-37, for example. 16 The "imaginer" is also Thomson or Thomson's speaker. Below, I address this confusion. 17 Goodridge 81. children's demand for their "Sire" reveals their love for the father and suggests the father's returned affection (314). The swain considers the "artless" tears of his children, thus portending and mourning the substantial loss they have yet to endure (315). The final fancies of the swain include his consideration of his family's vain labours and their potential suffering as presaged in those tears. Therefore, the swain expresses both self- love and good-nature.
Perhaps it appears difficult to discriminate between the imagination of Thomson,
(or Thomson's speaker) and the imagination of the swain in this "reverse homecoming" scene (311-15). Tim Fulford argues that the swain remains a "generalized rustic" because Thomson does not use a language derived from the swain's "colloquial speech," treating him "in a Latinate language which makes him merely an affecting example."18
This might suggest that Thomson is not espousing the swain's imagination or fellow feeling but his own. One might also argue that by suggesting that the swain's family and friends are "unseen" (310), this "reverse homecoming" conveys Thomson's own sympathy and not that of the swain. Still, the swain has already "fancied" the "tufted" home-front (290-1). And the internal rhyme and sentimental tone, which suggest the employment of more colloquial diction,19 suggest confluence, a return from darkness to more tender "Thoughts of Home" (286). The repetition of the long "o," for instance, in
"o'er," "Thro" and "Th'officious," links what remains "unseen" with what is imagined
(307, 309, 311, 310). In any case, the "rustic" can hardly appear a "generalized" figure
18 Fulford 26. 19 For Thomson's "Scottish" diction, see Mary Jane Scott, James Thomson. Anglo-Scot, and "Scottish Language in the Poetry of James Thomson," Neuphilologische-Mitteilungen 82.4 (1981) 370-85; Thomas B. Gilmore, "Implicit Criticism of Thomson's Seasons in Johnson's Dictionary," Modern Philology 86.3 (1989) 265-73. when one considers the amount of attention Thomson devotes both to the swain s initial fancies of home and to his imagination of the home's interior.
This moment of imagination functions as another instance in The Seasons in which Thomson blurs the distinctions between two or more observers or between the observers and what is observed. Here, Thomson "presents perceptions which can only be products of imagination as if they were visual."21 He segues cinematically, as we might say, from a fancied exterior to a fancied interior. Indeed, the vision of the home's interior must be considered an aspect of the swain's imagination as well as that of the speaker. Thomson invests the swain with a passion for his family, a "Love" he prizes throughout The Seasons.22 Thomson's swain perseveres, consistently tempering his despair with a fancy associated with the more "tender Anguish" he conveys for the place and the people he loves (308). And Thomson reveals that he is likewise involved in expressing sympathy for souls in pain, both the benevolent swain and the family.
Thomson sustains his focus on the swain's imagination and thus, upon his own fellow feeling by delineating the swain's death as the cancellation of "Sense":
Alas!
Nor Wife, nor Children, more shall he behold,
Nor Friends, nor sacred Home. On every Nerve
The deadly Winter seizes; shuts up Sense;
And o'er his inmost Vitals creeping cold,
Lays him along the Snows, a stiffen'd Corse,
Stretch'd out, and bleaching in the northern Blast. (315-21)
20 See Chapter Four. 21 Patricia M. Spacks, The Poetry of Vision (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1967) 26. 22 "Spring" 1113-76, for example. See Chapter Four. 243
The speaker regrets the loss of the very sensibility which made the swain's experience of the scene so forceful. When he rues the swain's inability to further "behold" his family, he mourns as much the loss of the swain's imagination as his sight (316). This is confirmed by Thomson's own fanciful consideration of the freezing of the swain's
"inmost Vitals" (318). Ironically, the swain's body appears lively and sensitive, registering the cold on the same "Nerves" that once telegraphed the swain's urgent desire to return home (287 or 317).23 The "stiffen'd Corse" remains sorely active, "Stretch'd out, and bleaching in the northern Blast" (320-1). With the swain's body so responsive to this "Blast," Thomson mourns the loss of the swain's senses and the active imagination rendered obsolete (321).
If this scene raises doubts about the virtue of the swain and about the evil of the natural world, Thomson raises these doubts to emphasize that the proper employment of imagination is the cultivation of sympathy and fellow feeling. This tragedy reveals the
"negative capability" of the poem described by Mary Jane Scott:
Thomson's Augustan optimism is well founded on strong religious faith that
God's Providence is ultimately benevolent, yet the poet's optimism is always
tempered by his Calvinist awareness of man's limits. Modern critics have thus
essentially correctly defined the central paradox, indeed the unifying philosophy
of The Seasons, as Thomson's deep desire to comprehend the natural world and
its workings, together with his acknowledgement of the impossibility of attaining
such comprehension in this life. The poet's conundrum, his fragmentary earthly
"Nerves" are the "immediate instruments of motion and sensation [...] also, here, sinews," SEA 384n287. 244
vision itself, inspires by a sort of 'negative capability' yet stronger faith in God—
a God of power and wisdom, fear and love.24
Thomson will not blame God or think of nature as evil either to account for the swain's death or to express his own sympathy. Still, contrary to Anderson's claim that Thomson only views nature as "fearful" "momentarily," I would argue that Thomson does not hesitate to linger over and to mourn natural violence.25 Rather, he uses this tragedy to emphasize the importance of rallying one's senses in despair. The swain, in the end, might be at fault for succumbing to despair, though it is difficult to suggest that succumbing to hypothermia is the kind of wilful resignation Pope identifies in his vicious characters. Moreover, in his last moments, the swain expresses a desire to be with his family and a pity or sympathy for that family. If the "Ruling Passion" is "strong in death" as Pope claims in the "Epistle to Cobham,"26 the swain's death reveals his love for his home and family. And it is this fellow feeling which Thomson promotes in the lines that follow.
The Re-imagination of the Swain
In the remainder of this sequence (322-423), Thomson refers to the swain to teach the proper employment of imagination, the cultivation of sympathy or fellow feeling which, in turn, leads to social change. In the lines which immediately follow the death of the swain, the speaker condemns the "Proud" for their lack of sensitivity to human suffering:
AH little think the gay licentious Proud,
Whom Pleasure, Power, and Affluence surround;
24 Scott, James Thomson. Anglo-Scot 154, 327n6. 25 Anderson 65. 26 "Cobham" 263. They, who their thoughtless Hours in giddy Mirth,
And wanton, often cruel, Riot waste;
Ah little think they, while they dance along,
How many feel, this very Moment, Death
And all the sad Variety of Pain. (322-8)
Thomson's description of the "Proud" might not appear an adequate response to the pathetic scene to which it corresponds. His diction is expressive of the vanity and ignorance he critiques. With his wistful "Ah's" (322, 326) and his slant rhymes ["Proud and "surround" (322, 323); "gay," "waste," and "Pain" (322, 325, 328); "Ah," "Along," and "All" (322, 326, 328)], Thomson presents his critique of vanity and ignorance in a languid tone. John Goodridge argues that
Thomson's approach puts one in the mind of one of those smooth clergymen who
flawlessly deliver their funeral eulogies over the remains of someone they knew
nothing about: if one listens carefully it is possible to detect the join where the
name of the deceased is grafted into the pre-set speech.27
The speaker almost transforms into one of the "smooth" and unsympathetic people he wishes to criticize. Even his catalogue of "How many" people suffer, a phrase repeated quite often throughout the remainder of the verse paragraph, might function to distinguish Thomson from his previous, suffering subject.
Many readers of Thomson, conscious of this shift in emphasis, feel the need to address and to explain Thomson's transition from the swain's death to his criticism of the
"Proud" (322). For these, the swain most often serves as an emblem from which
Goodridge 85. "Winter" 327, 329, 330, 332, 334, 337, 338, 345, 346. 246
Thomson derives a moral more suited to his happily insulated, sympathetic audience.
This audience considers the swain to admonish themselves, lightly, for their own pride, to express sympathy, and to inspire works of charitable benevolence. Goodridge, who assesses Thomson's use of both realism and symbol in his depiction of rural labour, mourns this disjuncture with the greatest "reluctance":
Thomson's moral seems inadequate and alien to its context: it huffs and it puffs,
but it does not deal with what has just occurred. The moral is placed as if in
conclusion to the death of the swain, but then uses its own examples, which are
not related to the death of the swain. We are not told where the cause of death
lies, or what its meaning might be. Is it, as its context implies, simply a function
of the 'congenial horrors' of the season (which hitherto the poet has been rather
enjoying) or is it the result of a social injustice of the kind the moral is concerned
with? It lies between the two, on the page, but no syntactical connection is made
with either. In particular Thomson fails to make the connection with social
wrongs, and his failure to do so increases our feeling that the death is an excuse
for, rather than the subject of, the 'moral.'29
Goodridge's study of the moral's inadequacy is rather convincing, particularly when he notes that the speaker is not "dealing with what has just occurred." However, the shift in tone and style, I would argue, is less distinctive. One need only compare the "ah's" of the moralizing speech with the "o's" of the previous scene to identify a similar style. And, I would argue, even an apparent lack of "connection" does more to encourage comparison of the two sections of the sequence than to divide them.
Goodridge 85-86. 247
Thomson's discussion of sympathy is geared to inspire change in his audience. To this extent, the swain remains emblematic. Still, even for a reader "comfortably insulated from nature's cruelty," it does not follow that the "pity and sympathy aroused then turns easily to condescension, patronage, and even enjoyment of others' pain" as Fulford argues.30 Rather, Thomson attempts to avoid this condescension by remaining quite sensitive to the death of the swain in the passage which immediately follows (322-88) and through the remainder of the sequence (389-423). Doubles of the swain's body appear and reappear in a "sad Variety" of painful postures (328). This repetition enables
Thomson to emphasize the need for the proper employment of the imagination. With his recollection of both the suffering and the ultimately tender imagination of the swain,
Thomson teaches the importance of sympathy and fellow feeling as a means of bringing about social reform. This might make the swain emblematic, but it does not suggest a failure of Thomson to "connect" nor does it make the swain's death, itself, enjoyable.
Thomson refers to the swain's active imagination and to the loss of that imagination in death to emphasize the importance of imagining and responding generously to the suffering of others. He first criticizes the "Proud and "Affluent" who lead a life of "wanton, often cruel, Riot waste" (329, 302, 332, 325). These rioters are comparable to the vain proud in Pope's Epistles, those whose selfishness results in the oppression of others. Additionally, they resemble the "cruel Wretch" who experiences the
"Horrors" of the day in "Summer." With his reference to "Riot," Thomson begins to suggest that while the swain might not have been able to determine his own fate, wealthy and seemingly ignorant rioters determine the fate of others (325). And, in the catalogue of
Fulford 26, 27. See also Goodridge 83. 248 the "many" who suffer which follows, Thomson reveals the existence of the suffering which is ignored or caused by these rioters (325).
With his catalogue of the "sad Variety of Pain," Thomson emphasizes the necessity for the urban "Proud" to imagine the suffering of others like the swain, and to imagine this suffering in the manner o/the swain (328, 322). If the swain was able to imagine both the potential pit-falls and the home beneath the snow, Thomson suggests that his audience must identify the life of suffering which takes place outside, beneath, or alongside of, and, at times, because of this life of "Riot." Wondering, "How many sink in the devouring Flood," Thomson recalls the swain's fancied fears of the "still unfrozen spring" (309, 302). When he mourns those imprisoned from the "common Air and common Use / Of their own Limbs," Thomson recalls the body of the swain, devoid of its senses and left to "bleach" in the "Blast" (333-4, 317-21). Likewise, thinking of those
"Sore pierc'd by wintry Winds," and struck by misery, grief, and the "fiercer Tortures of the Mind," the speaker re-emphasizes the vivid tortures of the swain in body and mind
(336, 339). One thinks, of course, of the swain's despair, but also of his final concern for his family. And, in the contrast between suffering and riot, Thomson suggests that a life of riot is a life of vanity, urging for sympathy as a means of social change.
Thomson hones his criticism of a life of riot and urges the cultivation of fellow feeling by considering the suffering of the "many" in the "Vale," who, "rack'd with honest Passions, droop / In deep retir'd Distress" (343, 345-6). Here, Thomson revisits the country of the swain who so lately "sank" in the snow (305). The image of the people from the "Vale" who stand around the deathbed of another to "point the parting Anguish" contrasts that of the swain who died alone, without a person present to observe his 249
"Anguish" (346-48, 308). Thus, Thomson continues to recall the pain and suffering experienced by the swain. Concomitantly, he recalls the swain's fellow feeling for those at home, the same sympathy he observes in the mourners in the "Vale" (343). Thus, the life of "Riot" appears, as Pope would say, a life of "mean Self-love."31 And Thomson espouses fellow feeling yet again.
When he considers the potential reform of the proud, Thomson continues to recall the swain's dark but ultimately beneficial despair. The merest observation of human suffering, Thomson's argues, might produce substantial rewards.
Thought fond Man
Of These, and all the thousand nameless Ills,
That one incessant Struggle render Life,
One Scene of Toil, of Suffering, and of Fate,
Vice in his high Career would stand appall'd,
And heedless rambling Impulse learn to think;
The conscious Heart of Charity would warm,
And her wide Wish Benevolence dilate;
The social Tear would rise, the social Sigh;
And into clear Perfection, gradual Bliss,
Refining still, the social Passions work. (348-58)
Scott observes the poet's "carefully controlled movement from old-style to more
Moderate attitudes and corresponding optimistic tones and Augustan language."32
Indeed, while this constitutes a shift from a catalogue of suffering to an expansive and
31 "Bathurst" 228. 32 Scott 158. optimistic assessment of the potential for reform, this shift is "carefully controlled." The expansiveness of Thomson's envisioned transformation makes Thomson's criticism of riot and waste stinging. If the proud person thought of any one of these "thousand ills" the heart would be transformed (349). The "heedless rambling Impulse," Thomson argues, would become a "thinking" one. Thus, Thomson, like Pope, suggests the need to meet one's impulses with good sense. In describing this potential transformation,
Thomson refers to the swain's death. A "warm" heart and a "dilating" benevolence contrast the freezing of the swain's body (354-5). With this contrast, Thomson suggests that whereas the swain's death was not controllable, the ignorance of the proud is something which might easily be altered or transformed.
Thomson further condemns the proud by considering their active or wilful malevolence. The speaker's direction of his attention to issues of jail reform appears, initially, to limit the potential for expansive power he identifies in the "social Sigh"
(356). Like his swain, Thomson reverts back to a darker vision. He considers the
"horrors of the gloomy jail" and he observes how "little Tyrants" (366) have
Snatch'd the lean Morsel from the starving Mouth;
Tore from the cold wintry Limbs the tatter'd Weed,
Even robb'd them of the last of Comforts, Sleep. (368-70)
Here, Thomson considers the difference between the swain and the "cold" who are
"robbed of Sleep" (369-70). The swain, dying of hypothermia, cannot control the "cold," and his "sleep" is the sleep of death. Yet vicious men cause human suffering, here. In the contrast, Thomson suggests that those instances of suffering which can be controlled or rectified should be controlled or rectified. If control of one's environment is impossible 251
(one might cultivate the landscape, but one cannot, of course, repel a lightning bolt or escape a sudden snowstorm), control of one's behaviour towards others is certainly possible. Furthermore, Thomson makes what appeared, before, to be the ignorance or unwitting neglect of the proud appear, at last, a conscious malevolence, a "little" tyranny
(366). By exposing the wilful malevolence of his proud, Thomson, like Pope, considers the conscious ill will of ignorance and resignation.
Again, while Thomson's optimism is tempered, it remains exuberant. As Fulford aptly argues, Thomson harnesses the sympathy raised by the account of the shepherd "to encourage readers to approve of legislation to end the man-made oppression of extortion and torture in prison." Identifying the horrors of prison, Thomson finds, already, virtuous and generous people. Those of good faith, "touch'd with human Woe" have already "redressive search'd / Into the Horrors of the gloomy Jail" (360-1). And
Thomson perseveres. After observing the damage done by the "little Tyrants," he continues to anticipate expansive reform (367). With the influence of the "Patriot's weeding Hand," Thomson envisions a day more "glorious," in which the shackles of the prison are broken "And every Man within the Reach of Right" (383, 387-9). The torture of innocent people can and should be eliminated. And Thomson anticipates the day in which such change will take place.
In the closing scenes of the sequence, which mark a return to the violent natural landscape (389-423), Thomson confirms the necessity of employing sympathy to effect social change, recalling the swain yet again. As the sequence progresses to its close, the wracked body of the swain, "bleached by the northern blast" appears symbolically, and in
Fulford 25. 252 a manner so dark and "gruesome" 4 that a twenty-first century reader might consider this sequence a trauma narrative.35 A grave is defiled by ravenous wolves. Then, entire
"Hamlets" are buried by an avalanche. Contrary to Fulford's claims that the "episodic nature" of Thomson's work allows him to check his concerns about the "apparent cruelty and indifference of nature to human needs," Thomson addresses these concerns. He describes two extremes in nature, which, in their succession, first appear to do injustice to and then succeed in re-establishing the honour or integrity of the swain's body and mind.
With this dramatic reconciliation of extremes, Thomson continues to refer to the swain to teach the necessity of cultivating that feeling to effect reform whenever possible.
First, Thomson presents images of natural and animal desecration of the human form which seem to re-enact the violent "Blast" of winter upon the swain's body (321).
This might suggest that Thomson mourns the existence of natural evil. Yet Thomson uses these gruesome images to inspire social change. First, Thomson identifies the torture of
"Beauty" by hungry "wolves," starved by "wintry Famine" (405, 395, 389). Beasts from the hills come down to "tear the screaming infant" from a mother's "breast" (403). And
Thomson's speaker discusses the violence wrought upon
Even Beauty, force divine! at whose bright glance
The generous Lion stands in soften'd Gaze,
Here bleeds, a hapless undistinguish'd Prey. (405-7)
Thomson mourns the existence of violence in the animal and natural world, the violence which makes "Beauty," itself "bleed" (405, 407). Yet, in so doing, Thomson emphasizes
34 Cohen 249. 351 consider this only in passing. For standard theoretical discussions of "trauma" see Cathy Caruth, Trauma and Unclaimed Experience (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1995 and 1996, respectively); Shoshana Felman, Testimony (New York: Routledge, 1992). 36 Fulford 27. See also Anderson. 253 the need for social reform. As another instance of violence wrought upon the undeserving, beauty's bleeding must be associated with the death of the imaginative swain. By proxy, Thomson suggests the presence of a "Force divine" in his rural figure, too (405). Thus, Thomson's consideration of "Beauty" compares to Pope's appreciation of the light or divinity in humankind. The "Wolves," on the other hand, represent
Thomson's "little Tyrants" (395, 367). As such, Thomson implicitly compares the violence of uncontrollable animals (whose hunger is brought on by uncontrollable nature) with the violence of men. Thus, he continues to espouse reform where reform can be made.
Thomson sustains his call for reform by considering the wolves' desecration of a dead body. Earlier in the piece, Thomson charges husbandmen to be kind to animals left to "Dig for the wither'd Herb thro' Heaps of Snow" (264). Here, however, Thomson mourns the gruesome work of the wolves. They dig "The shrouded Body from the Grave; o'er which, / Mix'd with foul Shades, and frighted Ghosts, they howl" (412-13). Again,
Thomson recalls his description of the swain's body bleaching in the snow. Thomson also alludes to his representation of the rural folk who witness the "Anguish" of their friends
(346-8). With his "Wolves," too, Thomson continues to exhibit the "rage" of "little
Tyrants" (367). In so doing, Thomson emphasizes the need to change what can be changed, urging, implicitly, for social reform.
Thomson further recalls the swain by attempting to bury that which was defamed.
With the onslaught of heavy snows, or an avalanche, Thomson's speaker sees every creature, every thing smothered and ruined:
A wintry Waste in dire Commotion all; And Herds, and Flocks, and Travellers, and Swains,
And sometimes whole Brigades of marching Troops,
Or Hamlets sleeping in the Dead of Night,
Are deep beneath the smothering Ruin whelm'd. (419-23)
With his avalanche, Thomson exhibits the "impulse" to erase which Shaun Mam identifies as the original impulse of the 1726 version of "Winter": "the poet's first imaginative impulse was one of magisterial negation." Thomson employs such
"magisterial negation," here, to achieve a new balance or harmony. And, in so doing, he enacts or dramatizes the "reconciliation" of "extremes in Nature" Pope identifies in the
"Epistle to Bathurst."38 The outcome of such "commotion" is the burial and death of everything, the entire cast of rural or dislocated worthies in The Seasons: herds, flocks, travelers, swains, and troops, entire "Hamlets" ravaged as they "sleep" (420-1). Indeed, this erasure appears violent or evil as with the gruesome work of the wolves which precedes it. Still, as Ralph, Cohen suggests, this provides a parallel "calm" to the more
"indulgent" and gruesome image of the hungry animals feeding on human flesh. The burial of life, here, while tragic, also puts the defamation of "Beauty" and the "shrouded" body to rest (405, 412). Thus, Thomson, at last, buries his swain symbolically, valorizing the swain's dynamic imagination.
In the lines of poetry which follow the swain's death, Thomson remembers the swain. In so doing, Thomson espouses the cultivation of the kind of sympathy which inspires social change. He condemns the proud and honours the patriot. And, dramatizing the reconciliation of extremes in nature, Thomson urges his audience to eradicate human
37Irlaml30. 38 "Bathurst" 161-70. 39 Cohen 249. 255 tyranny. In his condemnation of the proud and in his survey of additional instances of violence in the winter landscape, Thomson pays homage to one who has not yet been included in his visionary company, his swain, who, in death, loses his capacity for imagination.
Frolic Fancy, Renovating Force, and Active Government
Thomson continues to refer to the swain throughout the remainder of "Winter" in order to espouse the employment of the imagination in identifying and cultivating virtue
(421-1069). When he considers both the role of the "frolic Fancy" as a salve to the despair aroused by philosophizing in the drawing-room and the role of the stage-play as a means of transforming the hearts of urban rioters, Thomson recalls the example of the swain's attempt to temper his imagination (609-16, 646-55). In both cases, Thomson imitates and espouses the swain's imaginative pursuits by attempting to temper a dark fancy with a tender one. Returning to the outdoors, Thomson refers to the swain's death to present an enthusiastic survey of the "renovating Force" of winter, dramatizing the reconciliation of extremes in nature on a more expansive level than in the swain sequence
(691-778). And, when he reconsiders winter's violence, Thomson recalls the swain at last to laud the "active Government" of those who suffer for a virtuous cause (902-1069).
Below, I briefly consider these allusions.
Thomson recalls the swain's attempt to temper his dark fancy with tender feeling when he presents "frolic Fancy" as a salve to the despair aroused by philosophical imagination (611). Thomson implicitly compares himself to the swain when he envisions a time in the future in which it might be possible to persevere against the winter "gloom:"
Thus in some deep Retirement would I pass The Winter-Glooms, with Friends of plaint Soul,
Or blithe, or solemn, as the Theme inspir'd: (572-4)
Thomson is already seated by a "fire," here, and he has already set aside his "book" to envision a procession of the worthy ancients and Britons he admires (430, 436 in 424-
554). To this extent, Thomson, unlike the swain, remains "happily insulated."
However, towards the end of this reverie, Thomson longs for the company of friends, including Pope.41 And, after mourning the loss of his friend, Hammond (555-71),
Thomson reiterates his longing for companionship (572-4). Thus, Thomson presents a desire to rally himself from despair or gloom in a similar manner to that of the perseverant swain.
Of course, Thomson's philosophical speculations and his "frolic Fancy" contrast the imaginings of his rural labourer (611). Still, by experiencing a similar kind of despair and by attempting to rally from this despair, Thomson compares himself to the darker swain before him. Furthermore, by considering his ideal evening in the subjunctive, as a vision of what might be, Thomson emphasizes the imaginative nature of the evening's pursuits (572-616). The ideal evening among friends includes natural and moral philosophizing. Thomson would like his friends of "pliant soul" to take part in a survey of the "ETERNAL MIND: Its Life, its Laws, its Progress, and its End" (573, 577-8). This survey includes the contemplation of "Nature's boundless Frame" and of its source, perhaps the "Void of Night" or, perhaps, "th'ETERNAL MIND" (575-7). Having left room
40 Fulford 26. 41 In "Winter" 550-4, Thomson envisions Pope descending from Twickenham to spend an hour with friends. After Pope's death in 1744, this passage must have taken on a more mournful tone, corresponding with the proceeding homage to the deceased Hammond, "Winter" 555-71. See also SEA 388nn550-5. 257 for belief in the creation of nature from the void, however, Thomson clearly aligns himself with "th'ETERNAL MIND" when he scans the
moral World,
Which, tho' to us it seems embroil'd, moves on
In higher Order; fitted, and impell'd,
By WISDOM'S finest Hand, (583-5)
Here, Thomson not only suggests the presence of an ordering "Hand" at work in external nature, he also implies that the "moral world" (the world of humankind, or, the human mind) is likewise ordered.
By presenting this philosophical discussion as a vision, Thomson underscores the imaginative aspects of philosophizing. And he reveals that such imagination sometimes results in a darkness or despair similar to that experienced by his swain. Having considered the "dim Spaces of Futurity" (604), Thomson recognizes the potential for despair, and he identifies its salve or cure:
But when with These the serious Thought is foil'd,
We, shifting for Relief, would play the Shapes
Of frolic Fancy; and incessant form
Those rapid Pictures, that assembled Train
Of fleet Ideas, never join'd before,
Whence lively Wit excites to gay Surprize;
Or Folly-painting Humour, grave himself,
Calls Laughter forth, deep-shaking every Nerve. (609-16) 258
In the "Epistle to Cobham" Pope criticizes the resignation of those overwhelmed by an excessive reading of character. And he refuses, in the "Epistle to Bathurst," to speculate
49 upon "other worlds," offering, instead, his "tale" of Sir Balaam. Here, Thomson, too, denotes the importance of promoting "Relief from such darkness through "frolic Fancy"
(610-11). Thomson teaches the importance of employing "frolic Fancy" as a salve for the mind foiled by it attempts to scan "dim Spaces of Futurity," where the "Mind" [...]
"Rises from State to State and World to World" (604, 606, 608). Insisting, however, upon the imaginative quality, and indeed, upon the virtues of both philosophic and "frolic" pursuits, Thomson presents a Lockean view of the work of "Fancy," identifying the joys derived joining "fleet Ideas, never join'd before" and "deep-shaking every Nerve" (611,
613, 616).43
As with the swain, whose "Thoughts of Home" might appear to exaggerate his despair, Thomson presents some doubt about the potential effectiveness of fanciful association as a cure for despair (286). The "rapid Pictures" generated by the fancy might function as a salve for one overwhelmed by imagining "States" and "Worlds" (612, 608).
Still, such association might simply serve to reprise or to expand one's former despair.
"Wif and grave "Humour" affect the "Nerves," after all (614, 615, 617). However,
Thomson's recognition of the resulting "laughter," and the calming of these "Nerves" with good "Humour" makes the expansion of despair via "frolic Fancy" less likely (615-
16).
As in the swain sequence, Thomson's initial consideration of a persistent, imaginative shift from a dark fancy to a tender fancy inspires a fresh condemnation of
42 "Bathurst" 335-8. 43 John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding II. xi. 2 (ref. in SEA 389n609-16). 259 vice. To make his case for the rejuvenating power of a properly-directed fancy more persuasive, Thomson investigates modes of fancy in the world outside of the drawing room (616-29, 630-45). Describing the jovial pursuits of the village, Thomson depicts a group overwhelmed by "superstitious Horror" once a "Goblin-Story" is told (619-20).
This seems more of an enjoyable diversion than a detrimental one, however, as Thomson swiftly moves to admire the "respondent dance" of the "Easily pleas'd" rustics (628,
624). Here, while Thomson means to prize the educated fancy over and above village superstition (as he has done throughout the poem, and most often in relation to his observation of a natural phenomena), the pleasures of the village tend to complement the work of his "frolic Fancy" (611).44 When Thomson turns to the "Sons of Riot" in the
"City," however, he more clearly identifies and condemns the wayward imagination (632,
630). Thomson sees the "Sons of Riot" pursuing of the "false inchanted Joy / To swift
Destruction" (632, 633-4). And he presents a more extensive account of their wayward fancies. Thus, Thomson suggests, more affirmatively, that while fancy provides a salve for the foiled thoughts of those in the drawing room, it is as likely to mislead as to enable a person to cope with their limitations. Still, in response to such vanity, Thomson, perhaps in the manner of his swain, rallies himself, identifying a means with which to transform the wayward imagination into a virtuous one.
What functioned, in the drawing room, as a mode of relief for stymied philosophical speculation becomes, in the theatre, a means of teaching virtuous behaviour to the sons of riot. Thomson, who earned a great portion of his literary income as a
Thomson's view of the Laplanders' joys beneath the northern lights in "Winter" 859-86 reprises and expands this appreciation of rural life. 260 playwright,45 identifies the transformative power of stage drama. As the fancy provides a salve to the foiled, inquisitive mind through "Wit" and "Humour," the theatre holds to the world "a Picture of itself / And raises sly the fair impartial Laugh" (614, 615, 651-2).
Thomson's "Picture" and his "fair impartial Laugh" correspond to the "Pictures" and the
"laughter" generated by "frolic Fancy" in the drawing room (651-2, 612, 616). And, interestingly, Thomson argues that Tragedy corrects by arousing "terror" in the breast
(649). Even the "tragic" fancy functions as a salve to the wayward imagination, inspiring wide-scale moral and ethical change by "charmfing] the Heart," teaching without making the audience conscious they are being taught (655). Additionally, with his praise of
Chesterfield (656-690),46 Thomson confirms the importance of the theatre in effecting such change, as Chesterfield denounced Walpole's attempts to impose the Licensing Act of 1737. Thomson confirms the role of the theatre to re-direct the wayward fancy, and thus, to inspire reform.
Having both imitated and espoused the habit of the swain in attempt to temper a dark fancy with a tender one, Thomson returns to the winter scene to revel in the reconciliation of extremes in the natural world. Such reconciliation occurs on a larger scale than in the swain sequence. Rather than opposing one violent extreme with another,
Thomson replaces the suffering of old with the joys of the new. He considers the ways in which winter weather might serve to renovate rather than to destroy. The "etherial Nitre" kills "infectious Damps, and the spent Air" is restored with "elemental Life" (694, 695,
45 See Sambrook, James Thomson (1700-1748): A Life. "The Semi-Dependent Profession of Letters: The Case of James Thomson," Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 264 (1989) 1142-6, and '"A Just Balance Between Patronage and the Press': The Case of James Thomson," Studies in the Literary Imagination 34.1 (2001) 137-53. 46 Philip Dormer Stanhope, fourth Earl of Chesterfield (1694-1773). These lines were added in 1744, SEA 390n664. 47 Lord Chesterfield: Letters. Ed. David Roberts, (New York: Oxford UP, 1992) xxi. 261
696). The "crouding" of the atmosphere around the body proves a mode of strengthening the body and the mind:
Close crouds the shining Atmosphere; and binds
Our strengthen'd Bodies in its cold Embrace,
Constringent; feeds, and animates our Blood;
Refines our Sprits, thro' the new-strung Nerves,
In swifter Sallies darting to the Brain;
Where sits the Soul, intense, collected, cool,
Bright as the Skies, and as the Season keen.
All Nature feels the renovating Force
Of Winter, only to the thoughtless Eye
In Ruin seen. (697-706)
Thomson replaces violence with vibrancy. The "close croud[ing]" of the atmosphere becomes a means of renewing not only the physical body but also the "Soul" (697, 702).
This makes the renewal more stinging, as it recalls the loss of the labourer's imagination and the violence of the natural world. Still, the renewal of "All Nature" proves all the more potent in light of this loss (703). Thomson's discussion of the "new-strung Nerves" and the "swifter Sallies" of the brain recalls both the extinguishing of the swain's body and imagination, and his own discussion of the need for the "Nerves" to be revived by
"frolic Fancy" (611, 616). And, here, Thomson boldly introduces a newer swain who is able to view and to avoid the "sullen Deeps, / Transparent, open" to his "Gaze" (711-12).
Thomson's depiction of the "Frost," likewise, is more dynamic because of the manner in which he recalls the swain (714-78). Thomson admires a "crystal Pavement, by the Breath of Heaven / Cemented firm; till, seiz'd from Shore to Shore, / The whole imprison'd River growls below" (729-31). The image of the "imprisoned river" recalls the swain's anxieties about the "yet unfrozen spring" (731, 302). Here, however, the speaker emphasizes that external nature is in sympathy with the foot of the traveler.
"Heaven" itself has cemented the upper layer of the ice (729-30). And, while the tread of the "Traveller" may be "hasty," as the first swain moved in his fields, the echoes of the
"hollow-sounding Plain" which "shakes from afar" inspire confidence in the traveler's safety (736-8). Likewise, the "shepherd," while "pensively" seeking his "pining Flock," takes pleasure in "descending" on the "slippery surface" (757-9). And a newer and even more "youthful Swain" skates. Perhaps in reference to Thomson's "frolic Fancy," he takes part in "Frolicks," too (760). Thomson's language requires the recollection of the swain's tragedy. Yet, by alluding to this loss, Thomson also conveys some measure of delight, effecting a reconciliation of extremes in nature on a grand scale.
Such revelry in the more pleasurable of two natural extremes does not sustain itself to the conclusion of the poem. However, when Thomson returns to a landscape of ruin, he recalls the example of the swain to espouse the "active Government" available to man (950 in 794ff.). Sailors and explorers become the newest victims of violent weather.
Thomson commiserates with those
Who, here entangled in the gathering Ice,
Take their last Look of the descending Sun;
While, full of Death, and fierce with tenfold Frost,
The long long Night, incumbent o'er their Heads,
Falls horrible! (921-5) 263
Thus, Thomson revisits the terrors of the swain in those of the explorer. The recollection of the "Sun," for example, compares to the swain's imagination of his hearth and of his children (922). If Thomson considers the swain's fellow feeling in the earlier passage, here, he lauds British might, asking "What have not BRITONS dar'd?"(926). And he commiserates with British explorers such as "Sir Hugh Willoughby, sent by QUEEN
ELIZABETH to discover the North-East passage" who attempt "So much in vain" and who appear to be punished "By jealous Nature with eternal Bars" (925n, 928-9). In this instance, Thomson lauds human resilience rather than criticizing the kind of destructive vanity he sometimes associates with explorers and colonizers. However, at least initially, Thomson appears to treat nature as a malevolent and jealous force. Thomson's own fancy darkens as he rues the suffering of his British worthies. The blasted body of the swain reappears, again, as the speaker witnesses Men "Froze into statues; to the
Cordage glued / The Sailor, and the Pilot to the Helm" (934-5). However, while Thomson considers the gruesome or deadly, he honours the perseverance of his heroes. Moreover, he clears "Nature" of its apparent "jealousy" (929) or evil in the lines that follow.
Thomson's further references to the swain-like devastation of the heroes in the landscape underscore his espousal of "active Government," or, a persevering individual virtue. Thomson's question, "What cannot active Government perform, / New-moulding
Man?" reveals the human potential for virtuous self-rule (950-1). While he espouses this theory only briefly, it compares to Pope's "Good Sense" as self-possession. For, when
Thomson honours Peter the Great and other "antient heroes" who possess strength of mind and body, he honours those who identify and cultivate their good sense in
48 Thomson criticizes the slave trade in "Summer" 1019-20. See also Edward Seeber, "Anti-Slavery Opinion in the Poems of Some Early French Followers of James Thomson," Modern Language Notes 50.7 (1935)427-34. 264 distinction from others (955-87). Similarly, Thomson's question, "Can human Force endure / Th'assembled Mischiefs that besiege them round?" suggests more faith than foreboding (1008-1009). Not only should the body express "Force," so, too, should the imagination be employed in sloughing off the "assembled Mischiefs" (1009). And, like
Pope, Thomson reveals the need to cultivate individual virtue as a "human Force" akin to the "force Divine" of "Beauty" and, at last, as aligned with "PROVIDENCE" itself (1020-
1). Thomson, too, asserts the divine self-possession required of those of good sense.
Thomson sustains his references to swain's imagination to the close of the poem.
As he promises expansive wisdom, understanding and an "unbounded SPRING," Thomson insists upon the virtue of those who suffer:
Ye vainly wise! Ye blind Presumptuous! Now,
Confounded in the Dust, adore that POWER,
And WISDOM oft arraign'd: see now the Cause,
Why unassuming Worth in secret liv'd,
And dy'd, neglected: why the good Man's Share
In Life was Gall and Bitterness of Soul:
Why the lone Widow, and her Orphans pin'd
In starving Solitude, while Luxury,
In Palaces, lay straining her low Thought,
To form unreal Wants: why Heaven-born Truth,
And Moderation fair, wore the red Marks
Of Superstition's Scourge: why licens'd Pain,
That cruel Spoiler, that embosom'd Foe, Imbitter'd all our Bliss. Ye good Distrest!
Ye noble Few! who here unbending stand
Beneath Life's Pressure, yet bear up a While,
And what your bounded View, which only saw
A little Part, deem'd Evil is no more:
The Storms of WINTRY TIME will quickly pass,
And one unbounded SPRING encircle All. (1043-69)
Recalling his previous criticism of the "Proud," whom he continues to criticize, here,
Thomson suggests that the suffering of the "lone Widow" and her pining "Orphans" will be corrected (1056). He anticipates rewards for the "good Distrest" (1063). Tortured innocents have, all along, been virtuous souls. Although these innocents might have deemed nature "Evil," Thomson emphasizes the order and benevolence of the creation, promising more expansive knowledge of this order in the future (1067). By considering the virtues of those who suffer, Thomson, to the last, champions the swain's active imagination, his attempt to actively govern his fancy.
Some suggest that the final "Hymn" provides the positive reassurance "Winter" lacks.49 However, particularly in light of his repeated allusions to the swain, the closure of Thomson's "Winter," as Lethbridge suggests, remains the "finale of finales."50
Thomson, like Pope in his address to "Burlington,"51 insists that future bliss is not far off, asking the "good Distrest" to "bear up a While" (1067, 1063, 1065). He delays the onslaught of that which already appeared to be "starting to Life" in the lines previous
49 For example, David J. Leigh, "Images of God in Pre-Romantic English Poetry," Ultimate Reality and Meaning 9.1 (1986)42. 50 Defence 213. 51 "Burlington" 191-204. See Chapter Three. 266 when he observes that enlightenment is not, finally, at hand (1044). One will have to wait a little longer for "Evil" to be deemed "no more," for the "storms of WINTRY TIME" to
"quickly pass, / And one unbounded SPRING encircle all" (1067, 1068-9). As Cohen suggests, when "the poet calls upon the reader to 'see' the glorious morning, 'see' means to transcend sight,"52 to envision future glory. Still the speaker's acknowledgement of suffering and his desire for the virtuous to "bear up a While" longer makes his vision ardent and assured (1065). It is the example of the imaginative swain which enables
Thomson to establish the benevolence of those in pain and to promise such deserved release.
In "Winter," Thomson repeatedly refers to the swain to espouse fellow feeling and social reform. He teaches that the fancy can function as a salve to the despair aroused by the philosophic imagination, and that it can be brought to inspire the transformation of the wayward in the theatre. Thomson also recalls the earlier scene to laud the
"renovating Force" of winter, to admire the "active Government" of the brave, and to anticipate the exaltation and rewards awaiting those in pain (704, 950). Not only in those lines which immediately follow his death, but over the course of "Winter," Thomson recalls the persistent fancy of his dying swain.
Cohen 312. CONCLUSION
Considering William Blake a "visionary" poet, Northrop Frye examines the poet's ability to transform both the objects observed and the mode of perception itself:
A visionary creates, or dwells in, a higher spiritual world in which the objects of
perception in this one have become transfigured and charged with a new intensity
of symbolism.1
While I hesitate to apply the term "visionary"2 to Thomson and Pope as a means of concluding my work on their lessons in the proper employment of the imagination, I can confirm that their poems exhibit a similar "transfiguration." Both poets compare natural phenomena and human behaviour so as to charge the "optics seeing" and the "objects seen"3 with a "new intensity of symbolism."
Frye uses the term "visionary" because the term occurs frequently in Blake's poems. Pope and Thomson use the terms "visionary" and "vision" infrequently, and not always affirmatively. Still, a brief consideration of their employment of the terms confirms that both poets espouse the employment of the imagination in cultivating moral excellence. As Patricia M. Spacks has considered the significance of "vision" in the period and in relation to Thomson,51 will consider Thomson's use of "visionary" in The
1 Northrop Frye, Fearful Symmetry 4. Blake's visionary poetry, according to Frye, champions the genius over the general intellect presented by Locke and, later, Johnson, Fearful Symmetry 3-29. 2 Among those who consider the visionary aspects of Pope and Thomson are Wallace Jackson, Vision and Re-Vision in Alexander Pope; George Wilson Knight, The Poetry of Pope. Laureate of Peace (London: Routledge and K. Paul, 1965); John Sitter, The Poetry of Pope's Dunciad; Patricia M. Spacks, The Poetry of Vision. 3 "Cobham" 24. 4 To the best of my ability, I have identified the occurrence of these terms as follows. In SEA, "visionary" occurs thrice: "Summer" 556 and "Autumn" 1031, 1122. "Vision" occurs eight times: "Spring" 234, 988, 1084, "Summer" 323, 585, 1632, 1694, and "Winter" 214. In ESP, "vision" occurs twice in "Bathurst" 85 and nl30-4. "Visionary" does not occur. "Visto" and "Vista" occur in "Burlington" 15-16 and 93, respectively. 5 Spacks, The Poetry of Vision 1-45.
267 268
Seasons. And, as "visionary" does not occur in Epistles to Several Persons, I will consider Pope's employment of "vision," as well as his references to "Visto" and "Vista."
In The Seasons, "visionary" modifies the hour, the place or the quality of one's imagining.6 The first of the three occurrences of "visionary" in The Seasons appears in
"Summer" where Thomson associates his imagination with those of the ancient bards
(556 in 516-63). Thomson situates himself in the dark "Grove" and "midnight Depth," the "Haunts of Meditation" (516-17, 522). After characterizing these "Haunts" as those which inspired the bards of long ago and in which the contemporary poet might, as well, hear voices of inspiration, Thomson acknowledges his own election and expresses elation. With "sacred Terror, a severe Delight," he hears "a Voice, than Human more," which asks, in turn, for his own "responsive Song" (541, 543, 552). He thrills when invited by this voice to "sing with us" of "Nature" and of "Nature's God" in the appointed "Visionary Hour" (563, 556). Here, Thomson employs "visionary" to consider his imagination's similarity to the bards of long ago whose song still fills the groves. And he celebrates the order or benevolence in the creation.
Thomson's second employment of "visionary," which refers to that first
"Visionary Hour," promotes comparison of philosophical and poetic fancy (1031 in
"Autumn" 1004-36). In "Autumn," Thomson conveys his desire to be brought, again, to those "vast embowering Shades! / To twilight Groves, and visionary Vales!" where
"Voices more than human, thro' the Void / Deep-sounding, seize th'enthusiastic Ear"
(1030-1, 1035-6). Here, however, the desire for transport to a "visionary" locale functions as a response to what already might have been construed as a vision,
6 The word does not occur in the form of a noun describing the person with the capacity for prophecy or imagination. 269
Thomson's ecstatic observation of the approach of "PHILOSOPHIC MELANCHOLY" and the
"Rapture," "Astonishment" and social feeling that arise from it (1004-29). His desire to return to the "visionary Vales" of "Summer," then, might suggest a desire to experience a more or less powerful elation than the one he has just experienced. Is the work on
"PHILOSOPHIC MELANCHOLY" less, equally, or more powerful than the poet's initial trip to the visionary groves? As Lethbridge speculates of The Seasons as a whole, Thomson might be attempting, here, to consider poetry superior to philosophy.7 However, he wonders if even the "Gloom" associated with the "Groves" is "too much" (1038). In any case, Thomson's employment of "visionary" suggests that one consider both philosophy and poetry to be imaginative pursuits. Such comparison complements Thomson's desire to "play the Shapes / of frolic Fancy" in "Winter" as a salve or comfort for the feelings of limitation and despair aroused by the imagination of the "dim Spaces of Futurity."
The final occurrence of "visionary" in "Autumn," and, according to my survey, the final occurrence in The Seasons, is Thomson's characterization of the masses' response to meteors in the night sky (1122 in 1115-37). While Thomson appreciates the flight of meteors in the sky (1103-14), the panicked crowd runs rampant; Thomson considers the "visionary Scene" where "On all Sides swells the superstitious Din" (1122-
3). Thomson reveals and criticizes the crowd's belief in and fear of the decline of nature, a fear of decline expressed, likewise, by the "poor men of pelf and the "wizard" in the
"Epistle to Bathurst."9 The uneducated and superstitious band allows "even Nature's self to "totter on the Brink of Time" (1131-2). Thus, Thomson seeks to confirm a distinction between the person of a polite or educated imagination, the "Inspect sage,"
7 Stefanie Lethbridge, Defence 24ff. See Introduction. 8 "Winter" 610-11, 604. See Chapter Five. 9 "Bathurst" 115-16, 136-46. 270 and the masses (1134-7). Thomson employs "visionary," at last, to insist upon the necessity of "philosophic" imagination. And his criticism of the uneducated masses here and earlier in the poem10 makes his consideration of the swain's less suspect imagining in
"Winter"11 more surprising and, hence, more powerful. Particularly in light of his earlier employment of "visionary" to describe his own elation, the term "visionary" conveys
Thomson's interest in the exuberance of the superstitious crowd, an interest he develops when he considers the swain's love for his family and, later, when he admires the virtues of the Laplanders in "Winter."12
While "visionary" does not occur in Pope's four Epistles to Several Persons,13
"vision" occurs twice in the sequence. "Vision" refers to a dream or to something observed with the naked eye; and, to the sight or insight of the poet, dreamer or observer.14 Pope employs "vision" in the "Epistle to Bathurst" and "Vista" and "Visto" 5 in the "Epistle to Burlington" to criticize the wayward imagination. In the "Epistle to
Bathurst," Wharton or his ghost,16 wakes from his delusions, "(all his Visions past)," to find himself in a rather primitive state, sans the "Meat, Cloaths, and Fire" necessary for living (85, 82). Thus, Pope provides justice for a man who lived a life in "Lust of
Praise." Pope then criticizes Joseph Gage and Lady Mary Herbert for their dreams of purchasing royal titles and power. In a note, he describes "the Lady on a vision of the like
1U For example, "Spring" 208-17; "Summer" 1706-29. 11 See Chapter Five. 12 In "Winter" 859-86, the Laplanders enjoy the northern lights and remains insulated from a "Vice" Thomson identifies elsewhere. 13 "Visionary" appears frequently in The Odyssey of Homer, Trans. Alexander Pope, Ed. Maynard Mack, Vols. IX-X, The Twickenham Edition of the Poems of Alexander Pope (New Haven: Yale UP, 1951) Vol. IX, xix: 625-55, e.g. 14 See Spacks, The Poetry of Vision 1-45. 15 A "Visto" is "the view seen at the ends of the avenues of clipped trees that were fashionable in Queen Anne's reign," ESP 133nl5. 16 Cobham awakes in the sense that he "turns repentant, and his God adores" in "Cobham" 188. However, he "dies" in "Cobham" 204. 17 "Cobham" 181. 271 royal nature" to identify and to frown on her ambition (100nl30-4). Additionally, Pope's refers, in the "Epistle to Burlington," to the tasteless "Sir Visto" who lets others "paint, build, and plant" for him, and to the destruction of Sabinus' fine woods by the son who longs for a "op'ner Vista" (13-18, 89-98). These references reveal an excess or lack of consideration, respectively, for the genius of another. Indeed, "vision," "Visto" and
"Vista" in the Epistles reveal delusion. However, by employing these terms, Pope emphasizes the need for good sense.
Both poets, in their employment of "visionary" and "vision," respectively, reveal that they are writing from within a world in which the "objects of perception" have been
"charged with a new intensity of symbolism." Thomson delights in the order and inspiration of his visionary hour. And he recalls this pleasant episode to recover from his necessary but taxing philosophic melancholy and to condemn the dark fears of the uneducated albeit dynamic masses. Pope uses "vision" to condemn the excessive self- love and the ill-nature of men and women who fail to observe the order of reconciled extremes in nature and to apply this mode of reconciliation to their own conduct.
Condemning the self-love and malice they associate with darkness and decline, Pope and
Thomson consider the hidden, benevolent order of the natural world so as to espouse virtuous action in that world. With imagination, one might consider the potential virtue of one's passions and develop the kind of social sympathies which both provide domestic happiness and lead to social and political reform. With imagination, one might
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