Under the idea here suggested, a greater propriety is given to the verse, which otherwise appears so tame and common-place,
'Tis all thou art, and all the proud shall be.
It sufficiently appears from Pope's letter that she was of a wild and romantic disposition. She left her friends and country, and commenced a sentimental pursuit after the object in which her ambition and enthusiastic caprice had centered. Having alienated her relations by her wayward conduct, and being disappointed in the hopes she had formed, she retired voluntarily to a convent. Warton asserts that she was "forced" into a nunnery. This is expressly contrary to what Pope himself says in a letter to her: "If you are resolved in revenge to rob the world of so much example as you may afford it, I believe your design to be in vain; for, in a monastery, your devotions cannot carry you so far towards the next world, as to make this lose sight of you." It is most probable that incipient lunacy was the cause of her perverted feelings, and untimely end. Johnson says, "poetry has been seldom worse employed than in dignifying the amorous fury of a raving girl." This seems severe, contemptuous, and unfeeling. Johnson, however, chiefly adverted, I imagine, to the false reasoning and absurd attempt in the lines "Is there no bright," &c., to make suicide the natural consequence of more elevated feelings. Johnson spoke as a severe moralist, and a rigid philosopher, against such contemptible reasoning as Pope employs upon this subject from the fifth to the twenty-second verse. Having been, as might naturally be expected from his superior understanding, disgusted with the reasoning part of the poem, the gentler touches of fancy and tenderness were lost, if I may say so, on him. He would turn with disdain from such images as—
There shall the morn her earliest tears bestow;
or perhaps exclaim, as upon another occasion, Incredulus odi. Notwithstanding, however, his severity, the animated passages of this poem, "But thou, false guardian," &c., and the lines of tenderness and poetic fancy interspersed, cannot be read without sympathy. The verses "Yet shall thy grave," &c., are possibly too common-place, but they are surely beautiful. If any expression might be objected to, perhaps it would be "silver" for "white" wings of an angel.—Bowles.
The Elegy, although produced at an early age, is not exceeded in pathos and true poetry by any production of its author. But whilst we admit the extraordinary powers displayed by the poet, we cannot but perceive that they are apparently employed to give a sanction to an act of criminality, and to inculcate principles which cannot be too cautiously guarded against. It must, however, be observed, that this piece is not to be judged of by the common rules of criticism. It is, in fact, a spontaneous burst of indignation against the authors of the calamity which it records. Throughout the whole poem, the author speaks as if he were under a delusion, and utters sentiments which would be wholly unpardonable at other times. It is only in this light that we can excuse the violence of many of the expressions, which border on the very verge of impiety. The first line of the poem demonstrates that he is no longer under the control of reason. He sees the ghost of the person whom he so highly admired and loved. The "visionary sword" gleams before his eyes, and in the excess of his grief he perceives nothing but what is great and noble in the act that terminated her life. This impassioned strain is continued till his anger is turned against the author of her sufferings, when it is poured out in one of the most terrific passages which poetry, either ancient or modern, can exhibit,—a passage in which indignation and revenge seem to absorb every other feeling, and to involve not only the offender, but all who are connected with him, in indiscriminate destruction. Nor is this sufficient—their destruction must be the cause of exultation to others, and they are to become the objects of insult and abhorrence—
There passengers shall stand, and pointing say, &c.
Compassion at length succeeds to resentment, and pity to terror. The poet in some degree assumes his own character, and his feelings are expressed in language of the deepest affection and tenderness, which impresses itself indelibly on the memory of the reader. The concluding lines, whilst they display the ardour of real passion, demonstrate how greatly the author was attached to the art he professed; that, and his affection for the object of his grief, could only expire together;
The Muse forgot, and thou beloved no more.—Roscoe.
This poem first appeared in the quarto of 1717, where it bore the title of "Verses to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady." In the edition of 1736, "Elegy" was substituted for "Verses." The earliest historical account of the heroine was given by William Ayre, Esq., in a miserable compilation called Memoirs of Pope, which is full of extravagant fictions and blunders.[532] This wretched book-maker has merely turned the incidents of the poem into prose, and amplified them in the process. His narrative would be unworthy of notice if it had not been adopted by Ruffhead, who borrowed, without acknowledgment, the statements, and, in the main, the very language of Ayre. The authority of Ruffhead's work is entirely due to the fact, that it was in part drawn up from manuscripts supplied by Warburton, and was subsequently revised by him. The copy corrected by the bishop contains no note on the pages which record the fate of the unfortunate lady. It does not follow that he knew the particulars to be true because he has not declared them to be false. He was probably ignorant on the subject, and unable either to confirm or confute the story. Dr. Johnson was in the same position. "The lady's name and adventures," he says, in his Life of Pope, "I have sought with fruitless inquiry. I can, therefore, tell no more than I have learned from Mr. Ruffhead, who writes with the confidence of one who could trust his information." The trust was fallacious. Ruffhead, an uncritical transcriber, a blind man led by the blind, was deceived by a transparent impostor who, in default of facts, embellished the hints in Pope's verse. His style of invention is emblazoned in the last sentence of his narrative when he says, that "the priesthood would have buried the lady in the highway, but it seems their power there did not extend so far." The law of England till the reign of George IV. ordained that a suicide, unless irresponsible from insanity, should be interred in the highway, and a stake driven through the body. Pope, in his poem, only spoke of "unpaid rites," whence Ayre, alias Curll, concluded that the law of the place did not sanction road-burial. Familiar, however, with the English notion he transfers it to the priests of a locality where the usage, by his own confession, did not exist.