'Of Pope's Rape of the Lock, Macaulay says: "Admirable indeed! The fight towards the beginning of the last book is very extravagant and foolish. It is the blemish of a poem which, but for this blemish, would be as near perfection in its own class as any work in the world." '
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Babington Macaulay Print: Book
'Shakespeare incited his appetite for poetry: Cowper, Pope, Dryden, Goldsmith, Thomson, Byron. Not only were they more interesting than the fifty volumes of Wesley's Christian Library: eventually Barker realised that "the reason why I could not understand them was, that there was nothing to be understood - that the books were made up of words, and commonplace errors and mystical and nonsensical expressions, and that there was no light or truth in them". When his superintendent searched his lodgings and found Shakespeare and Byron there, Barker was hauled before a disciplinary committee'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Barker Print: Book
'[Mary Smith] found emancipation in Shakespeare, Dryden, Goldsmith and other standard male authors, whom she extolled for their universality: "These authors wrote from their hearts for humanity, and I could follow them fully and with delight, though but a child. They awakened my young nature, and I found for the first time that my pondering heart was akin to that of the whole human race. And when I read the famous essays of Steele and Addison, I could realize much of their truth an beauty of expression... Pope's stanzas, which I read at school as an eight year old child, showed me how far I felt and shared the sentiment that he wrote, when he says,
Thus let me live unseen, unknown
Thus unlamented let me die;
Steal from the world and not a stone
Tell where I lie".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Smith Print: Book
My companions at the breakfast-table through this summer were many of our popular English Classics. Among these may be enumerated "The Death of Abel" which I read emphatically aloud. Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, Pope's Homer, Cicero's Letters, Elizabeth, or the Exile of Siberia, Dr Johnson's Rasselas, with many other works of established reputation.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Cole Print: Book
Byron to John Murray, 15 September 1817, on what he perceives to be inferiority of contemporary authors to Pope: 'I am the more confirmed in this - by having lately gone over some of our Classics - particularly Pope ... I took Moore's poems & my own & some others - & went over them side by side with Pope's - and I was really astonished ... and mortified - at the ineffable distance in point of sense - harmony - effect - & even Imagination Passion - & Invention - between the little Queen Anne's Man - & us of the lower Empire ...'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron
'Pope happened to be the first English poet that [Robert] Story discovered, so he provided the template from which the herd-boy minted pastorals "delightfully free from everything connected with rural life".'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Robert Story Print: Book
'[Hugh Miller's] literary style was out of date: in 1834 he alluded to "my having kept company with the older English writers - the Addisons, Popes and Robertsons of the last century at a time when I had no opportunity of becoming acquainted with the authors of the present time". Growing up in Cromarty, Miller had access to the substantial personal libraries of a carpenter and a retired clerk, as well as his father (sixty volumes), his uncles (150 volumes) and a cabinet-maker poet (upwards of 100 volumes). These collections offered a broad selection of English essayists and poets - of the Queen Anne period.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Hugh Miller Print: Book
[due to the fact that books in working class communities were generally cheap out of copyright reprints, not new works] Welsh collier Joseph Keating was able to immerse himself in Swift, Pope, Fielding, Richarson, Smollett, Goldsmith, Sheridan, Goldsmith, Keats, Byron, Shelley, Dickens and Greek philosophy, as well as the John Dicks edition of Vanity Fair in weekly installments. The common denominator among these authors was that they were all dead. "Volumes by living authors were too high-priced for me", Keating explained. "Our schoolbooks never mentioned living writers; and the impression in my mind was that an author, to be a living author, must be dead and that his work was all the better if he died of neglect and starvation".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Keating Print: Book
'orphanage boy Thomas Burke... devoured books until "my mind became a lumber room". Inevitably, "criticism was beyond me; the hungry man has no time for the fastidiousness of the epicure. I was hypnotised by the word Poet. A poem by Keats (some trifle never meant for print) was a poem by Keats. Pope, Cowper and Kirke White and Mrs Hemans and Samuel Rogers were Poets. That was enough."'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Burke Print: Unknown
Byron's Ravenna Journal (4 January-27 February 1821), 10 January 1821: 'Midnight. I have been turning over different Lives of the Poets. I rarely read their works, unless an occasional flight over the classical ones, Pope, Dryden, Johnson, Gray, and those who approach them nearest ...'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: George Gordon Lord Byron Print: Book
'[T.A.] Jackson's tastes had been formed by the old books in his parents' home: "A fine set of Pope, an odd volume or two of the Spectator, a Robinson Crusoe, Pope's translation of Homer, and a copy of Paradise Lost".'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas A. Jackson Print: Book
[A Sheffield Survey organised by Arnold Freeman in 1918, assessing 816 manual workers, gives the following case:] 'Engine tenter, age twenty-seven...Often attends operas...Methodically building up a personal library following the guidelines of Arnold Bennett's Literary Taste. Has read the Bible, Shakespeare (The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar, The Tempest, Much Ado about Nothing), Pope, Tennyson, Masefield, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Emerson, William Morris, most of Ruskin, Dickens (Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, A Tale of Two Cities, The Old Curiosity Shop, A Christmas Carol), The Cloister and the Hearth, GK Chesterton, Bernard Shaw (Major Barbara, John Bull's Other Island, The Doctor's Dilemma, Man and Superman, The Shewing up of Blanco Posnet, The Devil's Disciple, You Never Can Tell, Socialism and Superior Brains, Fabian Essays, An Unsocial Socialist, The Irrational Knot), John Galsworthy, about a dozen books by H.G. Wells and perhaps twenty by Bennett, Sidney and Beatrice Webb's Industrial Democracy and other books on trade unionism, Sir Oliver Lodge, Edward Carpenter's Towards Democracy and The Intermediate Sex, J.A. Hobson and Alfred Marshall on Economics and Plato's Republic'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: questionaire respondent Print: Book
'As a collier [Joseph Keating]... heard a co-worker sigh, "Heaven from all creatures hides the book of fate". Keating was stunned: "You are quoting Pope". "Ayh", replied his companion, "me and Pope do agree very well". Keating had himself been reading Pope, Fielding, Smollett, Goldsmith and Richardson in poorly printed paperbacks. Later he was reassigned to a less demanding job at a riverside colliery pumping station, which allowed him time to tackle Swift, Sheridan, Byron, Keats, Shelley and Thackeray'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Joseph Keating Print: Book
Frances Burney to Esther Burney: 'Well I recollect your reading with our dear Mother all Pope's Works, & Pitt's "Aeneid".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Esther Sleepe Burney and Esther Burney Print: Book
'In her teens [Frances] Burney was tackling on her own such works as Plutarch's "Lives" (in translation), Pope's "Iliad", and ... all the works of Pope, including the Letters; Hume's "History of England"; Hooke's "Roman History"; and Conyers Middleton's "Life of Cicero" ... She also ... studied music theory in Diderot's treatise ...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Burney Print: Book
'In her teens [Frances] Burney was tackling on her own such works as Plutarch's "Lives" (in translation), Pope's "Iliad", and ... all the works of Pope, including the Letters; Hume's "History of England"; Hooke's "Roman History"; and Conyers Middleton's "Life of Cicero" ... She also ... studied music theory in Diderot's treatise ...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Frances Burney Print: Book
'George Howell, bricklayer and trade unionist..."read promiscuously. How could it be otherwise? I had no real guide, was obliged to feel my way into light. Yet perhaps there was a guidance, although indefinite and without distinctive aim". Howell groped his way through literature "on the principle that one poet's works suggested another, or the criticisms on one led to comparisons with another. Thus: Milton - Shakespeare; Pope-Dryden; Byron-Shelley; Burns-Scott; Coleridge-Wordsworth and Southey, and later on Spenser-Chaucer, Bryant-Longfellow, and so on". By following these intertextual links, autodidacts could reconstruct the literary canon on their own'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: George Howell Print: Book
'Lancashire journalist Allen Clarke (b.1863), the son of a Bolton textile worker, avidly read his father's paperback editions of Shakespeare and ploughed through the literature section (Chaucer, Marlowe, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Milton, Pope, Chatterton, Goldsmith, Byron, Shelley, Burns, Wordsworth, Leigh Hunt) of the public library. With that preparation, he was winning prizes for poems in London papers by age thirteen...[he] went on to found and edit several Lancashire journals'.
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Allen Clarke Print: Book
'Yesterday and today I have been reading the Bible and Pope, and looking at prints of Paris. Cholera is reported in Philadelphia...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Richard Grahame Print: Book
'Yesterday... reading the Bible and Pope, and looking at prints of Paris. Cholera is reported in Philadelphia...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Richard Grahame Print: Book
'Methinks, Sir, Mr Pope might employ his Time, and his admirable Genius better than in exposing Insects of a Day: For if these Authors would live longer, they should not be put down as Dunces.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Richardson Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
'I have bought Mr Pope over so often, and his "Dunciad" before his last new-vampt one, that I am tired of the Extravagance; and wonder every Body else is not. Especially, as now by this, he confesses that his Abuse of his first hero was for Abuse sake, having no better object for his Abuse. I admire Mr Pope's Genius, and his Versification: But forgive me, Sir, to say, I am scandaliz'd for human Nature, and such Talents, sunk so low'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Richardson Print: BookManuscript: Unknown
?The gentle Cowper was my earliest favourite, a small second-hand copy of his poems, which I bought for eighteen pence, being the first book I bought for myself. It emptied my pocket, but I walked home, as I had walked to Newcastle (a distance some eighteen miles to and fro) with a light head, now and then reading as I fared along. Longfellow, Pope, Milton, Wordsworth and other poets were soon afterwards added to my little collection. I read them all. Many passages have clung to my memory, a life-long possession, giving, with their music, sometimes inspiration, sometimes solace in the conflicts and sorrows of life.?
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Burt Print: Book
'By courtesy of a friend I had the loan of Mr. Pope's poetical works together with his translations of Homer's "Iliad" and "Odyssey". I also read Mr. Hervey's "Theron and Aspasia", but with no great pleasure, because of its chiefly dwelling upon controverted points of theology. I was induced to read it by a sense of what was due to the request of a valued friend. As to Mr. Pope's works and translations, I read them with much satisfaction. In passing, I must observe that of Homer's poems I greatly preferred the "Odyssey"; for the "Iliad" was too full of warlike descriptions for one of my pacific temper. I still retain this preference. My reading times were at my meals, and after I had left work in the evening.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carter Print: Book
'Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was simultaneously complemented and embarrassed by Pope's tribute in "Epistle to Mr Gay". She sent a copy of the verses to her sister in Paris, but she explained she had "stiffle'd" them in England... Lady Mary characteristically felt the impropriety as much as the flattery of Pope's admiration'.
Unknown
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Wortley Montagu
'An example of vivid, if not particularly fair, criticism occurs in a letter from Lady Hertford to the countess of Pomfret in 1739. "Mr Pope has seen fit to publish a new volume of poems. It contains his 'Sober Advice', 'Seventeen Hundred and Thirty-Eight', his 'Epistle to Augustus', and several things which he had sold singly... I presume [the poem "Engraved on the collar of a dog which I gave to his royal highness"] is to prove that he can descend into Bathos, with the same alacrity that he has formerly soared to the summit of Parnassus'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Hertford Print: Book
'In a 1735 letter to Lady Hertford, [Elizabeth Singer] Rowe observes that the "Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot" "Seems to be writ with a malice more than human, and has surely something infernal in it. It is surprising, that a man can divest himself of the tender sentiments of nature so far, as deliberately to give anguish and confusion to beings of his own kind".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Singer Rowe Print: Unknown
'Mary Lepel Hervey, although Pope's friend before her marriage,disparaged the poet in her mature correspondence. Attributing his polished style to Lord Bolingbroke's influence, she declared in 1748 that Pope "would certainly never have wrote so elegantly, but that, as he bragged, envy must own he lived among the great".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Lepel Hervey Print: Unknown
'[Mary] Jones particularly admired Pope's letters. In August 1735, not long after the publication of "Letters of Mr Pope and Several Eminent Persons", she wrote Martha Lovelace that "I've at last had the inexpressible Pleasure of reading Mr Pope's Letters; and am so well satisfied with 'em, that I shall read all future Letters (Except Miss Lovelace's) with a great deal less Pleasure for their sake. In his other Productions I have always admir'd the Author, but now I love the Man".'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Jones Print: Book
[Anna Seward protested against criticism of Pope]'To... poet John Morfitt, she retorts: "It is not true of Pope that he polished everything high. His 'Satires', his 'Ethic Epistles', the glorious 'Dunciad', and even several parts of the 'Essay on Man', frequently present passages in a plain, unornamented style".'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anna Seward Print: Book
[Anna Seward protested against criticism of Pope]'To... poet John Morfitt, she retorts: "It is not true of Pope that he polished everything high. His 'Satires', his 'Ethic Epistles', the glorious 'Dunciad', and even several parts of the 'Essay on Man', frequently present passages in a plain, unornamented style".'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anna Seward Print: Book
[Anna Seward protested against criticism of Pope]'To... poet John Morfitt, she retorts: "It is not true of Pope that he polished everything high. His 'Satires', his 'Ethic Epistles', the glorious 'Dunciad', and even several parts of the 'Essay on Man', frequently present passages in a plain, unornamented style".'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anna Seward Print: Book
[Anna Seward protested against criticism of Pope]'To... poet John Morfitt, she retorts: "It is not true of Pope that he polished everything high. His 'Satires', his 'Ethic Epistles', the glorious 'Dunciad', and even several parts of the 'Essay on Man', frequently present passages in a plain, unornamented style".'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anna Seward Print: Book
'When Erasmus Darwin espouses the late-century opinion that "poetry admits of few abstract terms", Seward replies, "poetry that is merely imaginative and picturesque may not. If we find few abstract terms in the 'Rape of the Lock', we find a profusion of them in the sublimer 'Essay on Man'".'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anna Seward Print: Book
'"I however still love the hand upraised to shed my blood."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb Print: Book
[Transcribed in Lady Caroline's hand]: ?["]The Lamb thy riot dooms to bleed today
Had he thy ['thy' is underlined] reason would he skip & play
Pleas?d to the last he cropp?s the flowery food
And licks the hand upraised to shed his blood["]
What you always repeated!
1812?
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Lady Caroline Lamb
'Nature and Nature's Laws lay hidin night/...'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Carey/Maingay group Print: Unknown
'Oh Happiness! Our beings end and aim,...'
Unknown
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Molineux group, including Mrs Molineux
'Thursday 26th August
Pope?s ?Dunciad?
This is a week of work. Real graft. Diaries, even of small sketchy nature as this must remain to some extent neglected. One easily fills the spaces of course. But there is not the energy for choosing the peculiarity of the day?s happenings on thought, that will make the entry worth while.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Gerald Moore Print: Book
'I am glad to hear that you are getting forward so well with Homer. I know almost nothing about him - having never read any thing but Pope's translation, and not above a single book of the original - & that several years ago. Indeed I know very little of the Greek at any rate. I have several times begun to read Xenophon's anabasis completely: but always gave it up in favour of something else - You complain that nothing that you do leaves a vestige behind it: - what do you make of Homer?'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle Print: Book
'Read the "Dunciad", with Warton's and Wakefield's Annotations...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
'Finished the "Memoirs of Scriblerus"; an exquisite piece of satire, of which the separate parts of Swift, Pope, and Arbuthnot, are sometimes very distinguishable...'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
'Read Pope's five "Ethic Epistles" or "Moral Essays". There is an occasional pertness and flippancy in them, not to my taste...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Green Print: Book
[Mary Shelley's Reading List for 1815. Only those titles not mentioned in journal entries are given separate database entries. xs denote books also read by Percy Shelley]
'Posthumous Works. 3.
Sorrows of Werter
Don Roderick - by Southey
Gibbons Decline & fall.
x Paradise Regained
x Gibbons Life and Letters - 1st edition 2
x Lara
New Arabian Nights 3
Corinna
Fall of the Jesuits
Rinaldo Rinaldini
Fo[n]tenelle's Plurality of the Worlds
Hermsprong
Le diable boiteux
Man as he is.
Rokeby.
Ovid's Meamo[r]phoses in Latin
x Wordsworth's Poems
x Spenser's Fairy Queen
x Life of the Philipps
x Fox's History of James II
The Reflector
Wieland.
Fleetwood
Don Carlos
x Peter Wilkins
Rousseau's Confessions.
x Espriella's Letters from England
Lenora - a poem
Emile
x Milton's Paradise Lost
X Life of Lady Hamilton
De l'Alemagne - by Made de Stael
3 vols. of Barruel
x Caliph Vathek
Nouvelle Heloise
x Kotzebue's account of his banishment to Siberia.
Waverly
Clarissa Harlowe
Robertson's Hist. of america
x Virgil
xTale of Tub.
x Milton's speech on Unlicensed printing
x Curse of Kehama
x Madoc
La Bible Expliquee
Lives of Abelard and Heloise
The New Testament
Coleridge's Poems.
1st vol. Syteme de la Nature
x Castle of Indolence
Chattertons Poems.
x Paradise Regained
Don Carlos.
x Lycidas.
x St Leon
Shakespeare's Play. Part of which Shelley reads aloud
Burkes account of civil society
x Excursion
Pope's Homer's Illiad
x Sallust
Micromegas
x Life of Chauser
Canterbury Tales
Peruvian letters.
Voyages round the World
Pluarch's lives.
x 2 vols of Gibbon
Ormond
Hugh Trevor
x Labaume's Hist. of the Russian War
Lewis's tales
Castle of Udolpho
Guy Mannering
Charles XII by Voltaire
Tales of the East'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Godwin
'I have perused the last lampoon of your ingenious friend, and am not surprised you did not find me out under the name of Sappho, because there is nothing I ever heard in our characters or circumstances to make a parallel, but as the town (except you, who know better) generally suppose Pope means me, whenever he mentions that name, which appears to be irritated by supposing her writer of the verses to the Imitator of Horace.'
Unknown
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary, Lady Wortley Montagu
Letter to Miss Ewing, August 10 1778 'When I am a czarina of some new discovered region, one of my first edicts shall be, that every one of my subjects, who is incapable of being amused in a rational and elegant manner, shall work hard from morning to night. And in this regulation I will consult the happiness of my said subjects ?Nor let their everlasting yawn express/The pain and penalties of idleness?'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee MacVicar] Print: Book
Letter to Miss Ewing October 3 1778 'Modern history indeed refutes my wise conclusions, by presenting us with an almost similar character [ie to one in fiction], Lord Bolingbroke, whom Pope distinguishes by the epithet of all-accomplished St. John. He addressed his Essay on Man to him, and speaks of him on all occasions with the most enthusiastic admiration. Swift does almost the same; and Chesterfield, who only saw him in extreme old age, when he might be thought to have outlived his talents and his graces, was yet dazzled with his person and address ?.
?. Thus, without heart, without truth or morals, this man [ie Lord Bolingbroke] was enabled to captivate and do mischief, not only all his life, but even after death. The deistical writings he left behind were not the result of self-conviction, or a desire to convince others, but the mere vanity of exploring the trackless wastes of speculation, of overthrowing established opinions, and thus creating a region in which to rule. It was like Satan?s expedition in search of some domain, where he might exercise power and produce misery'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee MacVicar] Print: Book
Letter to Miss Ourry October 30 1791 'This, no doubt, forms no pleasant chain of dependences, but in this, as in many other instances ?What happier nature shrinks at with affright,/ The hard inhabitants contend is right.? '
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee MacVicar] Print: Book
Letter to Miss Dunbar October 1802 'I don?t know whether I remarked to you before, that I never knew a creature who enjoys, in a higher degree that
"Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind" which Pope gives to his vestals.'
Century: 1700-1799 / 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee MacVicar] Print: Book
'Finish Troilus and Cressida - read 3 books of Pope's Homer'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'Read Pope's Homer - finish it - read Paul et Virginie'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Shelley Print: Book
'S. goes to Pisa. - finishes the Rape of the Lock to me in the Evening.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
'S. reads Pope's Essay on Criticism aloud.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley Print: Book
Tuesday 19 January 1915:
'I'm reading The Idiot. I cant bear the style of it very often; at the same time, he seems to me
to have the kind of vitality in him that Scott had; only Scott merely made superb ordinary
people, & D. creates wonders, with very subtle brains, & fearful sufferings. Perhaps the
likeness to Scott partly consists in the loose, free & easy, style of the translation. I am also
reading Michelet, plodding through the dreary middle ages; & Fanny Kemble's Life. Yesterday
in the train I read The Rape of the Lock, which seems to me "supreme" -- almost superhuman
in its beauty & brilliancy -- you really can't believe such things are written down.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Wednesday 20 January 1915: 'I read Essay upon Criticism waiting for my train at Hammersmith.
The classics make the time pass much better than the Pall Mall Gazette.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
Thursday 21 January 1915: 'I went to the London Library [...] Here I read Gilbert Murray on
Immortality, got a book for L[eonard]. & so home, missing my train, & reading the Letter to
Arbuthnot on Hammersmith Station.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
[Sitwell said] 'I used to read "The Rape of the Lock" at night under the bedclothes by the light of a candle. It's a wonder I didn't set myself on fire. I had memorized it by the time I was twelve'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Edith Sitwell Print: Book
'.....I've been ill with heart trouble - why I can't imagine, as it has always been quite strong so Sachie lent me his country house for a fortnight. I sat on the verandah all day, reading and sleeping. I read a lot of Dryden, in a lovely first edition ( Dryden was by bith a county neighbour, which accounts for the library being full of his work) - Pope, the life of Alexander the Great, of whom there is a portrait wearing a periwig, and delightful eighteenth century books about the moral worth of animals, praising the industry of the Bee, reproving the Ostrich for being a Bad Parent.....'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edith Sitwell Print: Book
'I have done all my [italics] composition [end italics] of Ld B -, & done Crabbe outright since you left & got up Dryden & Pope - so now I'm all clear & straight before me.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
'You remember Stanton Harcourt - in Pope's Letters'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell Print: Book
'[her mother having forbidden her to learn to read due to her weak eyes] I was at this time about five Years of Age, and my Mother being one Day abroad, I had happily laid hold on "Alexander's Feast", and found something in it so charming, that I read it aloud; - but how like a condemned Criminal did I look, when my Father, softly opening his Study-door, took in the very Fact; I dropt my Book, and burst into Tears, begging Pardon, and promising never to do so again: But my Sorrow was soon dispell'd, when he bade me not be frighten'd, but read to him, which to his great Surprize, I did very distinctly, and without hurting the beauty of the Numbers. Instead of the whipping, of which I stood in Dread, he took me up in his Arms, and kiss'd me, giving me a whole Shilling, as a Reward, and told me, "He would give me another, as soon as I got a Poem by Heart"; which he put into my Hand, and prov'd to be Mr [italics] Pope[end italics]'s sacred Eclogue, which Task I perform'd before my Mother return'd Home. They were both astonish'd at my Memory, and from that Day forward, I was [permitted to read as much as I pleas'd'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Laetitia van Lewen Print: Book
'[Pilkington tells how Swift cut out many pages of an edition of Horace and made her paste letters between the covers instead] 'I told him, I was extreamly proud to be honoured with his Commands: "But, Sir, may I presume to make a request to you?" "Yes", says he, "but Ten to One I shall deny it". "I hope not Sir, 'tis this; may I have Leave to read the Letters as I go on?" "Why, provided you will acknowledge yourself amply rewarded for your Trouble, I don't much care if I indulge you so far; but are you sure you can read?" "I don't know Sir, I'll try". "Well then begin with this". It was a letter from Lord [italics] Bolingbroke [end italics], Dated six o'Clock in the Morning; it began with a remark, how differently that Hour appeared to him now, rising cool, serene, and temperate, to contemplate the Beauties of Nature, to what it had done in some former Parts of his Life, when he was either in the midst of Excesses, or returning Home sated with them [Pilkington continues to summarise the 'moral philosophy' of the letter and professes herself delighted with all his other letters]
Nor can I be at all surprized that Mr [italics] Pope [end italics] should so often celebrate a Genius who for sublimity of Thought, and elegance of Stile, had few Equals. The rest of the Dean's Correspondents were, the Lady [italics] Masham [end italics], the Earl of [italics] Oxford [end italics] [a long list of others, ending] Mr [italics] Pope [end italics], Mr [italics] Gay [end italics], Dr [italics] Arbuthnot [end italics]; A Noble and learned Set! So my Readers may judge what a Banquet I had. I cou'd not avoid remarking to the Dean, that notwithstanding the Friendship Mr [italics] Pope [end italics] professed for Mr [italics] Gay [end italics], he cou'd not forbear a great many Satyrical, or if I might be allowed to say so, envious Remarks on the success of the [italics] Beggar's Opera [end italics] The Dean very frankly own'd, he did not think Mr [italics] Pope [end italics] was so candid to the Merits of other Writers, as he ought to be. [cont. in a subsequent entry]'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Laetitia Pilkington Manuscript: Letter
'[start of this passage found in database entries 9840-2] 'It was a letter from Lord [italics] Bolingbroke [end italics], Dated six o'Clock in the Morning; it began with a remark, how differently that Hour appeared to him now, rising cool, serene, and temperate, to contemplate the Beauties of Nature, to what it had done in some former Parts of his Life, when he was either in the midst of Excesses, or returning Home sated with them [Pilkington continues to summarise the 'moral philosophy' of the letter and professes herself delighted with all his other letters]
Nor can I be at all surprized that Mr [italics] Pope [end italics] should so often celebrate a Genius who for sublimity of Thought, and elegance of Stile, had few Equals. The rest of the Dean's Correspondents were, the Lady [italics] Masham [end italics], the Earl of [italics] Oxford [end italics] [a long list of others, ending] Mr [italics] Pope [end italics], Mr [italics] Gay [end italics], Dr [italics] Arbuthnot [end italics]; A Noble and learned Set! So my Readers may judge what a Banquet I had. I cou'd not avoid remarking to the Dean, that notwithstanding the Friendship Mr [italics] Pope [end italics] professed for Mr [italics] Gay [end italics], he cou'd not forbear a great many Satyrical, or if I might be allowed to say so, envious Remarks on the success of the [italics] Beggar's Opera [end italics] The Dean very frankly own'd, he did not think Mr [italics] Pope [end italics] was so candid to the Merits of other Writers, as he ought to be. I then ventur'd to ask the Dean, whether he thought the Lines Mr [italics] Pope [end italics] addresses him with, in the Beginning of the [italics] Dunciad [end italics], were any Compliment to him? [italics] viz
O Thou! whatever Title please thine Ear. [end italics]
'I believe', says he, they were meant as such, but they are very stiff'; - 'Indeed, Sir, said I, 'he is so perfectly a Master of harmonious Numbers, that had his Heart been in the least affected with his Subject, he must have writ better'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Laetitia Pilkington Print: Book
'[start of this passage found in database entries 9840-2] 'It was a letter from Lord [italics] Bolingbroke [end italics], Dated six o'Clock in the Morning; it began with a remark, how differently that Hour appeared to him now, rising cool, serene, and temperate, to contemplate the Beauties of Nature, to what it had done in some former Parts of his Life, when he was either in the midst of Excesses, or returning Home sated with them [Pilkington continues to summarise the 'moral philosophy' of the letter and professes herself delighted with all his other letters]
Nor can I be at all surprized that Mr [italics] Pope [end italics] should so often celebrate a Genius who for sublimity of Thought, and elegance of Stile, had few Equals. The rest of the Dean's Correspondents were, the Lady [italics] Masham [end italics], the Earl of [italics] Oxford [end italics] [a long list of others, ending] Mr [italics] Pope [end italics], Mr [italics] Gay [end italics], Dr [italics] Arbuthnot [end italics]; A Noble and learned Set! So my Readers may judge what a Banquet I had. I cou'd not avoid remarking to the Dean, that notwithstanding the Friendship Mr [italics] Pope [end italics] professed for Mr [italics] Gay [end italics], he cou'd not forbear a great many Satyrical, or if I might be allowed to say so, envious Remarks on the success of the [italics] Beggar's Opera [end italics] The Dean very frankly own'd, he did not think Mr [italics] Pope [end italics] was so candid to the Merits of other Writers, as he ought to be. I then ventur'd to ask the Dean, whether he thought the Lines Mr [italics] Pope [end italics] addresses him with, in the Beginning of the [italics] Dunciad [end italics], were any Compliment to him? [italics] viz
O Thou! whatever Title please thine Ear. [end italics]
'I believe', says he, they were meant as such, but they are very stiff'; - 'Indeed, Sir, said I, 'he is so perfectly a Master of harmonious Numbers, that had his Heart been in the least affected with his Subject, he must have writ better'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Jonathan Swift Print: Book
[reported speech of Jonathan Swift] 'In the first Place, Mr [italics] Pilkington [end italics], she had the Insolence this Morning, not only to desire to read the Writings of the most celebrated Genius's of the Age, in which I indulged her; but she must also, forsooth, pretend to praise or censure them as if she knew something of the matter; indeed her Remarks were not much amiss, considering they were guess Work; but this Letter here of Mr [italics] Pope[end italics]'s she has absolutely condemned. Read it' (he did so)'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Matthew Pilkington Manuscript: Letter
[Matthew Pilkington was in England and was staying with Pope, upon Swift's recommendation. Having received a letter in which he said Pope was treating him handsomely, Laetitia took it to show Swift] 'The Dean read it over with a fix'd Attention, and returning it to me, he told me, he had, by the same Pacquet, receiv'd a Letter from Mr [italics] Pope [end italics], which, with somewhat of a stern Brow, he put into my Hand, and walk'd out into the Garden [the letter is full of abuse from Pope of M. Pilkington's manner and behaviour] By the time I had read it thro', the Dean return'd, and ask'd me what I thought of it? I told him, I was sure Mr [italics] Pilkington [end italics] did not deserve the Character Mr [italics] Pope [end italics] had given of him; and that he was highly ungenerous to caress and abuse him at the same Time. Upon this the Dean lost all Patience, and flew into such a rage that he quite terrify'd me'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Laetitia Pilkington Manuscript: Letter
[Pilkington having annoyed Swift by remembering one of his poems and reciting it to others, he decided to test her memory. She told him] 'I could repeat not only all his Works, but all [italics] Shakespear[end italics]'s, which I put to this Trial; I desir'd him to open any Part of it and read a Line, and I would engage to go on with the whole Speech; as we were in his Library, he directly made the Experiment: The Line he first gave me, he had purposely picked out for its singular Oddness:
[italics] Put rancours in the Vessel of my Peace [end italics] MacBeth
I readily went on with the whole Speech, and did so several times, that he try'd me with different Plays. The Dean then took down [italics] Hudibras [end italics], and order'd me to examine him in it, as he had done me in [italics] Shakespear [end itaics]; and, to my great Surprize, I found he remember'd every Line, from Beginning to End of it. I say, it surpriz'd me, because I had been misled by Mr [italics] Pope [end italics]'s Remark, That
[italics] Where beams of warm Imagination play
The Memory's soft Figures melt away [end italics] Essay on Criticism'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Laetitia Pilkington Print: Book
'Why sure every Person must acknowledge, that while [italics] he [Pope; end italics] is insulting [italics] his [end italics] Betters, his Ethic Epistles are little more than Lord [italics] Shaftesbury's [end italics] Rhapsody be rhym'd; his [italics] Windsor Forest [end italics] stollen [sic] from [italics] Cooper's [end italics] Hill; and his [italics] Eloisa and Abelard [end italics], the most beautiful Lines in it, taken from [italics] Milton's Il Penseroso [end italics]'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Laetitia Pilkington Print: Book
'Why sure every Person must acknowledge, that while [italics] he [Pope; end italics] is insulting [italics] his [end italics] Betters, his Ethic Epistles are little more than Lord [italics] Shaftesbury's [end italics] Rhapsody be rhym'd; his [italics] Windsor Forest [end italics] stollen [sic] from [italics] Cooper's [end italics] Hill; and his [italics] Eloisa and Abelard [end italics], the most beautiful Lines in it, taken from [italics] Milton's Il Penseroso [end italics]'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Laetitia Pilkington Print: Book
'Why sure every Person must acknowledge, that while [italics] he [Pope; end italics] is insulting [italics] his [end italics] Betters, his Ethic Epistles are little more than Lord [italics] Shaftesbury's [end italics] Rhapsody be rhym'd; his [italics] Windsor Forest [end italics] stollen [sic] from [italics] Cooper's [end italics] Hill; and his [italics] Eloisa and Abelard [end italics], the most beautiful Lines in it, taken from [italics] Milton's Il Penseroso [end italics]'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Laetitia Pilkington Print: Unknown
'I think I have scarce ever read Two better Lines than Mr POPE's Epitaph on this Prince of Philosophers [Newton; she then quotes the lines] His Inscription on Sir [italics] Godfrey Kneller's [end italics] Monument is as remarkably bad as this is excellent. [She quotes 8 lines] And bad as it is, 'tis but a lean Translation from the [italics] Italian [end italics], an enervate Language, well adapted to the soft Warblers of it, but incapable of manly Strength, Dignity or Grace.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Laetitia Pilkington Print: Unknown
'I think I have scarce ever read Two better Lines than Mr POPE's Epitaph on this Prince of Philosophers [Newton; she then quotes the lines] His Inscription on Sir [italics] Godfrey Kneller's [end italics] Monument is as remarkably bad as this is excellent. [She quotes 8 lines] And bad as it is, 'tis but a lean Translation from the [italics] Italian [end italics], an enervate Language, well adapted to the soft Warblers of it, but incapable of manly Strength, Dignity or Grace.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Laetitia Pilkington Manuscript: Graffito
'Now I have mentioned this small but inimitable well wrote Book (Xenophon's 'Symposium'], which was recommended to me by Dr [italics] Swift [end italics], and which I in return commend to all such of my fair Readers as have a Taste for real Wit, in which the divine [italics] Socrates [end italics] as conspicuously shone, as he did in Purity of Life and Constancy in Martyrdom; that they peruse it with Care, as it will refine their Ideas and improve their Judgements, polish their Stile, shew them true Beauty, and lead them gently and agreeably to its prime Origin and Source. [LP then quotes from Milton's 'Comus' on beauty] I must here observe in my tracing Authors thro' each other, [italics] Zenophon [end italics] and [italics] Plato [end italics] borrowed from [italics] Socrates [end italics], whose disciples they were. [italics] Zenophon [end italics] acknowledges it as freely as I do the Instructions I received from Dr [italics] Swift [end italics]. Lord [italics] Shaftsbury's[end italics] Search after Beauty, is copied from [italics] Socrates [end italics]; Mr [italics] Pope's [end italics] Ethics stolen from both; and the leaned Mr [italics] Hutcheson[end italics]'s Beauty and Harmony, an Imitation of the great Philosophers and excellent Moralists first mentioned'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Laetitia Pilkington Print: Book
'Having given such a specimen of his poetical powers, he was asked by Mr Jorden to translate Pope's Messiah into Latin verse, as a Christmas exercise. He performed it with uncommon rapidity, and in so masterly a manner, that he obtained great applause from it, which ever after kept him high in the estimation of his College and, indeed, of all the University'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'After dinner our conversation first turned upon Pope. Johnson said, his characters of men were admirably drawn, those of women not so well. He repeated to us, in his forcible melodious manner, the concluding lines of the "Dunciad". While he was talking loudly in praise of those lines, one of the company ventured to say, "Too fine for such a poem:— a poem on what?" Johnson, (with a disdainful look,) "Why, on [italics] dunces [italics]. It was worth while being a dunce then. Ah, Sir, hadst [italics] thou [italics] lived in those days! It is not worth while being a dunce now, when there are no wits." Bickerstaff observed, as a peculiar circumstance, that Pope's fame was higher when he was alive, than it was then. Johnson said, his Pastorals were poor things, though the versification was fine. He told us, with high satisfaction, the anecdote of Pope's enquiring who was the author of his "London," and saying, he will be soon [italics] deterré [italics]. He observed, that in Dryden's poetry there were passages drawn from a profundity which Pope could never reach. He repeated some fine lines on love, by the former, (which I have now forgotten,) and gave great applause to the character of Zimri. Goldsmith said, that Pope's character of Addison shewed a deep knowledge of the human heart. Johnson said, that the description of the temple, in "The Mourning Bride," was the finest poetical passage he had ever read; he recollected none in Shakspeare equal to it'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'After dinner our conversation first turned upon Pope. Johnson said, his characters of men were admirably drawn, those of women not so well. He repeated to us, in his forcible melodious manner, the concluding lines of the "Dunciad". While he was talking loudly in praise of those lines, one of the company ventured to say, "Too fine for such a poem:— a poem on what?" Johnson, (with a disdainful look,) "Why, on [italics] dunces [italics]. It was worth while being a dunce then. Ah, Sir, hadst [italics] thou [italics] lived in those days! It is not worth while being a dunce now, when there are no wits." Bickerstaff observed, as a peculiar circumstance, that Pope's fame was higher when he was alive, than it was then. Johnson said, his Pastorals were poor things, though the versification was fine. He told us, with high satisfaction, the anecdote of Pope's enquiring who was the author of his "London," and saying, he will be soon [italics] deterré [italics]. He observed, that in Dryden's poetry there were passages drawn from a profundity which Pope could never reach. He repeated some fine lines on love, by the former, (which I have now forgotten,) and gave great applause to the character of Zimri. Goldsmith said, that Pope's character of Addison shewed a deep knowledge of the human heart. Johnson said, that the description of the temple, in "The Mourning Bride," was the finest poetical passage he had ever read; he recollected none in Shakspeare equal to it'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
Passages transcribed into E. M. Forster's Commonplace Book (1938-40) include three quotations from the Dunciad (addresses to and by the personification of 'Dulness', beginning in I.12, I.311, II.34, and II.83).
These accompanied by comments opening: 'How undull! and how gay are Pope's ordures besides Swift's,' and continuing: 'Bk II [...] is grand and frolicsome, and belongs to that happy moment when aristocracy catches hold of ordinary experiences and common life, and plunges, retaining its own proper form.'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
'We talked of Flatman's Poems; and Mrs. Thrale observed, that Pope had partly borrowed from him "The dying Christian to his Soul". Johnson repeated Rochester's verses upon Flatman, which I think by much too severe:
"Nor that slow drudge in swift Pindarick strains,
Flatman, who Cowley imitates with pains,
And rides a jaded Muse, whipt with loose reins".
I like to recollect all the passages that I heard Johnson repeat: it stamps a value on them.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Unknown
'That wonderful edition of Pope has appeared: and I can never thank you enough. You cannot know what a delight it is to me. It is truly wonderful for me to have all his works in this singularly beautiful edition. And apart from the joy of having it, it has come at a moment when I am about to collect, enlarge, and put together all my notes about his poetry, for this book on poetry I am working at.
I am very glad, too, to have it from you. I hope you will inscribe it for me, when we meet. I have not nearly finished looking through it,even yet.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edith Sitwell Print: Book
Lord Dufferin to Alfred Tennyson [1858]:
'For the first 20 years of my life I not only did not care for poetry, but to the despair of my friends absolutely disliked it, at least so much of it as until that time had fallen in my way. In vain my mother read to me Dryden, Pope, Byron, Young, Cowper and all the standard classics of the day, each seemed to me as distasteful as I had from early infancy found Virgil, and I shall never forget her dismay when at a literary dinner I was cross-examined as to my tastes, and blushingly confessed before an Olympus of poets that I rather disliked poetry than otherwise.
'Soon afterwards I fell in with a volume of yours, and suddenly felt such a sensation of delight as I never experienced before. A new world seemed to open to me, and from that day, by a constant study of your works, I gradually worked my way to a gradual appreciation of what is good in all kinds of authors.'
Century: 1800-1849 / 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Helen Selina Sheridan Blackwood Print: Book
From Emily Tennyson's diary:
'Oct. 17th. [1858] He [Alfred Tennyson] read aloud "The Rape of the Lock," and noted the marvellous skill of many of the couplets.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson Print: Book
'shall insert as a literary curiosity. [The letter is given. It begins as follows]
"TO JAMES BOSWELL, ESQ.
DEAR SIR,
In the year 1763, being at London, I was carried by Dr. John Blair, Prebendary of Westminster, to dine at old Lord Bathurst's; where we found the late Mr. Mallet, Sir James Porter, who had been Ambassadour at Constantinople, the late Dr. Macaulay, and two or three more. The conversation turning on Mr. Pope, Lord Bathurst told us, that "The Essay on Man" was originally composed by Lord Bolingbroke in prose, and that Mr. Pope did no more than put it into verse: that he had read Lord Bolingbroke's manuscript in his own hand-writing; and remembered well, that he was at a loss whether most to admire the elegance of Lord Bolingbroke's prose, or the beauty of Mr. Pope's verse..."'
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Allen, 1st Earl Bathurst Print: Book
'How difficult it is to come at petty Literature! the long Note at the end of Pope's Odyssey is it seems written purposely to mislead one; Pope translated but two of the books as Doctor Warburton himself told Mr Johnson, when they met at Mrs French's Rout'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
'An Officer in the Army once asked old Major Markham how he could make any Pleasure out of such a Book, it was Pope's Ethic Epistles - why says the Major did you ever try? Not [italics] this very [end italics] Book replies the Friend: then take and read it now says Markham, and read the Notes too for that explains the Text: Our Officer sate awhile with the Book in his Hand - why now Major says he after a Quarter of an hour's Study - what Stuff this is - explain quotha - why the Notes as you call 'em only make t'other more unintelligible. The Truth was he read fairly down the Page without ever stopping - Text - Notes and all.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Major Markham Print: Book
'An Officer in the Army once asked old Major Markham how he could make any Pleasure out of such a Book, it was Pope's Ethic Epistles - why says the Major did you ever try? Not [italics] this very [end italics] Book replies the Friend: then take and read it now says Markham, and read the Notes too for that explains the Text: Our Officer sate awhile with the Book in his Hand - why now Major says he after a Quarter of an hour's Study - what Stuff this is - explain quotha - why the Notes as you call 'em only make t'other more unintelligible. The Truth was he read fairly down the Page without ever stopping - Text - Notes and all.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: anon Print: Book
'20: Jan: 1779.] My second Daughter Susanna Arabella who will not be nine Years old till next May, can at this Moment read a French Comedy to divert herself, and these very Holy days her Amusement has been to make Sophy & sometimes Hester help her to act the two or three 1st Scenes of Moliere's Bourgeois Gentilhomme: add to this she has a real Taste for English Poetry, and when Mr Johnson repeated Dryden's Musick Ode the other day, She said She had got the whole poem, & Pope's too upon the same Subject by Heart for her own Amusement'.
Century: Reader/Listener/Group: Susanna Arabella Thrale Print: Book
'"Ye Grots & Caverns shagg'd with horrid Thorn!" This Verse from Pope's Eloisa was originally Milton's - 'tis in Comus, but I think very little remember'd'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
'The Simile to the rope Dancer in Prior's Alma is only a good Versification of Dryden's Thought in the preface to Fresnoy's Art of Painting.
"Plac'd on the isthmus of a narrow State"
that Thought, & almost the whole Line is taken from Cowley.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
'I see Mr Pope's skilful Adaptation of Names to his Spirits in the Rape of the Lock, and to his Mud-Nymphs in the Dunciad, are all borrowed from one of Ben Jonson's Masques, perform'd at Court in the Reign of King James the first.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
'I see Mr Pope's skilful Adaptation of Names to his Spirits in the Rape of the Lock, and to his Mud-Nymphs in the Dunciad, are all borrowed from one of Ben Jonson's Masques, perform'd at Court in the Reign of King James the first.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
'We have got a sort of literary Curiosity amongst us; the foul Copy of Pope's Homer, with all his old intended Verses, Sketches, emendations &c. strange that a Man shd keep such Things!'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Manuscript: Unknown
'I love Johnson's Prose better than Addison's, I like the Dunciad beyond all Pope's Poems; I delight in Young's Satires & in Rubens's Painting, Cowley captivates my Heart; & when I read Bruyere, I often catch myself kissing the Book for fondness of the Author['s] strong-marked Characters, glowing Colours, striking Sentiments - to please - H:L: T.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
'I have had put into my Hand the First Copy of Pope's Pastorals, with the gradual Alterations and Emendations marked in the Margin: that he should Attain to Perfection by repeated Touches, & slow Degrees, is not at all strange tho' 'tis curious; it is however odd enough that a Man should be so [italics] imbued [end italics] with the classicks as to write Love Verses from one Shepherd to another, because Virgil wote his Corydon & Alexis; The Third Pastoral runs all thro' with the name Thyrsis instead of Delia in the Book before me'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Manuscript: book
'I have had put into my Hand the First Copy of Pope's Pastorals, with the gradual Alterations and Emendations marked in the Margin: that he should Attain to Perfection by repeated Touches, & slow Degrees, is not at all strange tho' 'tis curious; it is however odd enough that a Man should be so [italics] imbued [end italics] with the classicks as to write Love Verses from one Shepherd to another, because Virgil wote his Corydon & Alexis; The Third Pastoral runs all thro' with the name Thyrsis instead of Delia in the Book before me'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
'I have heard that all the kept Mistresses read Pope's Eloisa with singular delight - 'tis a great Testimony to its Ingenuity; they are commonly very ignorant Women, & can only be pleased with it as it expresses strong Feelings of Nature & Passion'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale Print: Book
'While their [her daughters'] Father's Life preserv'd my Authority entire, I used it [italics] all & only [end italics] for their Improvement; & since it expired with him, & my Influence perished by my Connection with Piozzi - I have read to them what I could not force or perswade them to read for themselves. The English & Roman Histories, the Bible; - not Extracts, but the whole from End to End - Milton, Shakespeare, Pope's Iliad, Odyssey & other Works, some Travels through the well-known Parts of Europe; some elegant Novels as Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield, Voltaire's Zadig &c. Young & Addison's works, Plays out of Number, Rollin's Belles Lettres - and hundreds of Things now forgot, have filled our Time up since we left London for Bath.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Hester Lynch Thrale and her daughters Hester, Susanna and Sophia Print: Book
John Wilson Croker to Mr Justice Jackson, 4 December 1856:
'I am pretty sure that the first eclogue and the first book of the Aeneid were all of Virgil that I
translated [while of school age]. Pope's Homer I had by heart. The old Lord Shannon had given
me one when my father once took me (aet. 10) to Castle Martyr. I dare say I knew of no
translation of Virgil, and, stimulated by the example of Mr. Pope, was resolved to fill up that
chasm in English literature.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: John Wilson Croker Print: Book
John Wilson Croker to the Rev. George Croly, 28 November 1816:
'Though I have little time to read poetry,and notwithstanding all the charms of fashion, I read
more of Pope and Dryden than I do of even Scott and Byron; that is to say, I do not return to
Scott and Byron with the same regular appetite that I do to the others.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Wilson Croker Print: Book
'As soon as I had learned to read, my great delight was that of learning epitaphs and monumental inscriptions. A story of melancholy import never failed to arrest my attention, and, before I was seven years old, I could correctly repeat Pope's Lines ot the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady; Mason's Elegy on the Death of the beautiful Countess of Coventry; and many smaller poems on similar subjects.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Mary Darby Print: Book
From chapter entitled 'Madame d'Arblay':
'Whilst her mother read Pope's works and Pitt's AEneid with her eldest daughter Esther,
Fanny [Burney] sat by and listened, and learnt by heart the passages which her sister recited.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Esther Burney and daughter (also Esther) Print: Book
Catherine Talbot to Elizabeth Carter, 16 August 1751:
'Our present after-supper author is Mr Pope, in Mr Warburton's edition. Is it because one's strongest partialities, when in any point deceived, turn to the strongest prejudice of dislike, that I read those admirable poems and letters with a considerable mixture of pain and indignation? [...] one can scarce help looking upon all those eloquent expressions of benevolence and affection as too much paradox, while one sees them overbalanced by such bitterness and cutting severity [comments further].'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Catherine Talbot and family Print: Book
[Thomas Edwards to Samuel Richardson, 20 March 1752:]
'As to Mr Pope, though I had some acquaintance with him, and admired him as a poet, yet I must own I never had any great opinion of him in any other light [...] With all his affectation of humanity and a general benevolence, he was certainly a very ill-natured man; and can such a one easily be a good man?
'But were I ever so indisposed, what can I vindicate? Not the morality of his essays, for I think it very faulty. Mr Warburton has, indeed, tinkered it in some places to make it look orthodox, but yet it will not hold water [comments further on Warburton's edition of Pope]'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Edwards Print: Book
Thomas Edwards to Samuel Richardson, 15 January 1755:
'You have a very just opinion of St. John's works [...] As far as I have seen, and I read at Ember the last volume, which contains his essays, there is nothing in his objections but what has been published and answered over and over [...] I know not whether his system may be more properly called deistical, or atheistical; since, though in words he allows a God, he seems to make him such a one as Epicurus did; and to think that we are beneath his notice, or have very little to do with him. He laughs at all notions of revelation, or a particular providence, and reckons the present life the whole of man's existence. These essays, by the way, afford us abundant and irrefragable proof, that the plan of the Essay on Man was St.
John's, and not Pope's [...] You have here the whole scheme, the thoughts and in many places the very words of the poem; and a more consistent scheme it is here, than it appears there, after the poet and the parson had laid their heads together to disguise and make it pass for a christian system [comments further].'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Edwards Print: Book
'Meeting held at Oakdene, Northcourt Avenue 15. I. 35.
Sylvanus Reynolds in the Chair
1. Minutes of last read & approved.
5. It was with a great pleasure to the club to welcome back Charles and Katherine Evans, who
with the latter’s brother Samuel Bracher, came to entertain us with their programme of “Bees in
Music and Literature.”
6. Charles Evans opened with an introduction that gave us an outline of the bee’s life.[...]
7. We next listened to a record of Mendelssohn’s “Bee’s Wedding.”
8. Samuel Bracher gave a longish talk on Bees and the Poets. He classified the poems as Idyllic,
Scientific or Philosophical, and Ornamental; by quoting a great variety of works including lines
from Shakespeare, K. Tynan Hickson, Pope, Thompson, Evans, Alexander, Tennyson, & Watson,
he showed an amazing knowledge of the Poets. [...]
9. Charles Evans then spoke on Maeterlinck and Edwardes.
10. Charles Stansfield read Martin Armstrong’s Honey Harvest.
11. Another gramophone record gave us Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumble Bee”
12. Katherine Evans read from Vitoria Sackville-West’s “Bees on the Land”. Some of the lines
were of very great beauty, & much enjoyed.
13 H. M Wallis then read an extract from the Testament of Beauty, concerning Bees. But he & all
of us found Robert Bridges, at that hour in a warmish room, too difficult, and he called the
remainder of the reading off.
14. A general discussion was the permitted, and members let themselves go.'
1. Minutes of last read & approved.
5. It was with a great pleasure to the club to welcome back Charles and Katherine Evans, who
with the latter’s brother Samuel Bracher, came to entertain us with their programme of “Bees
in Music and Literature.”
6. Charles Evans opened with an introduction that gave us an outline of the bee’s life.[...]
7. We next listened to a record of Mendelssohn’s “Bee’s Wedding.”
8. Samuel Bracher gave a longish talk on Bees and the Poets. He classified the poems as
Idyllic, Scientific or Philosophical, and Ornamental; by quoting a great variety of works
including lines from Shakespeare, K. Tynan Hickson, Pope, Thompson, Evans, Alexander,
Tennyson, & Watson, he showed an amazing knowledge of the Poets. [...]
9. Charles Evans then spoke on Maeterlinck and Edwardes.
10. Charles Stansfield read Martin Armstrong’s Honey Harvest.
11. Another gramophone record gave us Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumble Bee”
12. Katherine Evans read from Vitoria Sackville-West’s “Bees on the Land”. Some of the lines
were of very great beauty, & much enjoyed.
13 H. M Wallis then read an extract from the Testament of Beauty, concerning Bees.But he &
all of us found Robert Bridges, at that hour in a warmish room, too difficult, and he called the
remainder of the reading off.
14. A general discussion was the permitted, and members let themselves go.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel V. Bracher
