THE MOCK-HEROIC

Our Lilliputian political struggles lend themselves to the attention of poetic satire, an almost forgotten art, but one that flourished gloriously from the mid-17^th to the mid-18^th centuries, purveyed by three masters in ascending order of brilliance, Samuel Butler, John Dryden and Alexander Pope.  What fun they would have had at the expense of May, Boris, Hammond and Moggie, diverted by Corbyn, Barnier and Juncker and a preening galère of bit-players like Tusk, Sturgeon, Soubry and Macron! They would all be skinned alive.

Samuel Butler

John Dryden

 

Alexander Pope

Samuel Butler (1613-1680) came from a quietly Anglican farming family in Worcestershire. After the Restoration of the monarchy under Charles II, he worked as a clerk to the gentry and briefly for the 2^nd Duke of Buckingham but was not received at court.  Like all England he had wearied of Puritan zealotry and he expressed his dislike in the epic mock heroic poem Hudibras, which became highly popular.

Such as do build their Faith upon
The holy Text of Pike and Gun;
Decide all Controversies by
Infallible Artillery;
And prove their Doctrine Orthodox
By Apostolic Blows and Knocks;
Call Fire and Sword and Desolation,
A godly-thorough-Reformation,
Which always must be carried on,
And still be doing, never done:
As if Religion were intended
For nothing else but to be mended.

This broadside against sectarianism and the futility of religious wars still resonates in our world defaced by Irish intransigence, Syrian blood-lust and Islamic extremism.

A more commanding figure than Butler is John Dryden (1631-1700), a man of many parts, poet, dramatist, translator and critic. In the genre of political satire none surpasses his mock-heroic epic Absalom and Achitophel of 1681. Outwardly a biblical narrative, in fact it is an allegory of the perilous intrigues surrounding Charles II. David is Charles II, Absalom is his illegitimate son the Duke of Monmouth, Achitophel the devious Earl of Shaftsbury and Zimri is the erratic rake the 2^nd Duke of Buckingham. Dryden’s portrait of Shaftsbury is devastating.

Of these the false Achitophel was first: 

A name to all succeeding ages curst. 

For close designs, and crooked counsels fit; 

Sagacious, bold and turbulent of wit: 

Restless, unfixt in principles and place; 

In pow'r unpleas'd, impatient of disgrace. 

A fiery soul, which working out its way, 

Fretted the pigmy-body to decay: 

And o'er inform'd the tenement of clay. 

A daring pilot in extremity; 

Pleas'd with the danger, when the waves went high 

He sought the storms; but for a calm unfit, 

Would steer too nigh the sands, to boast his wit. 

Dryden had already made an enemy of Buckingham and meted out a strikingly hostile appraisal of that gentleman’s character:

A man so various, that he seemed to be
Not one, but all mankind’s epitome:
Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong;
Was everything by starts, and nothing long;
But, in the course of one revolving moon,
Was chemist, fiddler, statesman and buffoon.

Dryden’s own loyalties were erratic: reared a Puritan, he became influenced by High Anglicanism, switching from support of the Commonwealth to enthusiasm for monarchy. He became the first Poet Laureate in 1668, a royal appointment, and eventually became a Catholic, welcoming James II. Expelled from Court on the accession of Protestant William and Mary in 1688, Dryden still made an honourable living as a writer and he was accorded full funereal privileges on his death in 1700, being eventually interred at Westminster Abbey.

How much we miss a poet of Dryden’s calibre to prick the bubble of the political classes in Britain and Europe in the Brexit battle!

Our third poet is Alexander Pope (1688-1744) a central figure in the Augustan Age and a poet of surpassing genius. Pope was the son of a London linen merchant and suffered various handicaps. He was born and remained a Catholic, subjected to discrimination under the Test Acts, unable to live in his own London and barred from many employments. He suffered from Pott’s Disease, tuberculosis of the spine, and was hunchbacked and of stunted growth, only reaching 4ft 6in. Unable to attend university, he was largely self-taught and absorbed a profound knowledge of ancient literature. He had the gift of friendship and came to know many people in literary circles; he was an excellent letter-writer and he charmed and delighted his various correspondents, many of them female.

Poetry was very different in those days. The poet was an upholder of standards, often those of the ancients, and his output was openly didactic. Thus Pope in his Essay on Criticism stated:

A little learning is a dang’rous thing,

Drink deep or drink not of the Pierian Spring.

Similarly in Pope’s An Essay on Man he declared:

Know then thyself: presume not God to scan

The proper study of Mankind is Man.

No modern poet would involve himself in such subjects. To us poetry is not now a narrative media, nor a handbook on morals or good taste. We most associate poetry with the untamed ego, our passionate or violent senses, with our inner struggles or self-conscious descriptions of natural beauty. But all of that did not really come in until the late 18^th century, with Scott, Wordsworth and Byron.

Pope’s mastery of the heroic couplet was most evident in his astonishingly ambitious translations of Homer, not at all like the atmosphere of the ancient Greeks, but redolent of the civilised drawing rooms of Augustan England.

The most accessible and the most popular of Pope’s works is his mock-heroic The Rape of the Lock of 1712 making a drama of the unconsented snipping of a lock of hair from Belinda’s mane by an ardent admirer.

Aubrey Beardsley's illustration in 1892 of The Rape of the Lock

What dire offence from am'rous causes springs, 

What mighty contests rise from trivial things, 

I sing—This verse to Caryl, Muse! is due: 

This, ev'n Belinda may vouchsafe to view: 

Slight is the subject, but not so the praise, 

If she inspire, and he approve my lays. 

He sets the scene with humour and wit: His mastery of the heroic couplet, his exquisite choice of words and the easy sophistication of his narrative recommends Pope to his readers. The satire is gentle but Pope could be cutting in his derision – see The Dunciad – and not for nothing was Pope known as The Wasp of Twickenham. But allow him to close in a relatively mellow vein.’

Close by those meads, for ever crown'd with flow'rs, 

Where Thames with pride surveys his rising tow'rs, 

There stands a structure of majestic frame, 

Which from the neighb'ring Hampton takes its name. 

Here Britain's statesmen oft the fall foredoom 

Of foreign tyrants and of nymphs at home; 

Here thou, great Anna! whom three realms obey, 

Dost sometimes counsel take—and sometimes tea. 

SMD

10.03.2018

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2018