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Alexander Pope

Date of Birth: 1688
Date of Death: 1744
Pope is considered as the greatest poet of the Classical period. He is ' prince of classicism' as Prof. Etton calls him. He was highly intellectual, extremely ambitious and capable of tremendous industry. These qualities brought him to the front rank of men of letters, and during his life time he was looked upon as a model poet. The main quality of Pope's poetry is its correctness. It was at the age of 23 that he published his Essay on Criticism(1711), and since then till the end of his life he enjoyed progidious reputation. In this Essay Pope insists on following the rules discovered by the ancients, because they are in harmony with nature;
Those rules of old discovered, not devise Are Nature still, but Nature methodized.

Pope's next work, The Rape of the Lock, is in some ways his master piece. It is a mock-heroic poem in which he celebrated the theme of the stealth by Lord Petre of a Lock of hair from the head of Miss Arabella. By this time Pope had perfected the heroic couplet, and he made use of this technical skill in translating Homer's Illiad and Odyssey which meant even years very hard work. The reputation which Pope now enjoyed created a most of jealous rivals whom he severely criticised and ridiculed in the Dunciad. This is Pope's greatest satire in which he attacked all source of literary incompetence. It is full of cruel and insulting couplets on his enemies. His next great poem was The Essay on Man (1732-34), which is full of brilliant passages and lines.

Alexander Pope,Classical Poet

Though Pope enjoyed a tremendous reputation during his life time and for some decades after his death he was so bitterly attacked during the 19th century that it was doubted whether Pope was a poet at all. But in the 20th century his reaction subsided, and now it is admitted by great critics that though much that Pope wrote his prosaic, not a very high order, yet a part of his poetry is undoubtedly indestructible. He is the supreme master of epigrammatic style. The result is that many of them have become proverbial saying in English language. For example :
Who shall decide when doctors disagree? Thou wert my guide, philosopher, and friend. Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is man. Hope springs eternal in the human breast; Man never is, but always to be, blest.

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