DAVID JONES

Texts In Context
November 2000

Essay On Pope's Epistle To Dr. Arbuthnot & Swift's

Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift
In Epistle To Dr. Arbuthnot and Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift, where do Pope
and Swift locate positive values, and how effectively do they communicate
them?

On the surface, it seems odd to search for positive values in works that are both, to some
extent, motivated by avarice and satirising personal enemies. Satire itself is rarely associated
with values more positive than topical wit or comedy. Yet both of these poems do convey a
variety of positive values aside from their humour. Epistle To Dr. Arbuthnot is fuelled by
idealism, Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift commends pragmatism. The tone shifts in both of
their closing sections, explicitly focussing on morality. Throughout however, both poems
advocate the importance of friendship, and the moral virtuousnessi of the authors themselves.
In Epistle To Dr. Arbuthnot Pope's moral virtue is emphasised from the start, in his
polite treatment of irritating fans. Brean Hammond creates a rather clinical "morphological
map" of the poem and concludes that: "One-third is devoted to poetic autobiography designed
to present the poet in as appealing a light as possible"ii. This is an analytical area full of
pitfalls, since we can only really impute the thoughts and attitudes of the
poem immediately to its dramatic speaker, and if to the author at all, only
by an act of biographical inference"iii. As narrator, Pope playing a stylised
character, but is doing so using real events from his lifeiv. More importantly, as an oratorial
satirist he can only justify his position by representing himself as truly virtuous. Sometimes
he does this in rhetorical statements that are in themselves unconvincing:

Not fashion's worshiper, nor fashion's fool,

Not lucre's madman, nor ambition's tool,
Not proud, not servile, be one poet's praise,
That if he pleased, he pleased by manly ways:
That flattery, even to kings, he held a shame,
And thought a lie in verse or prose the same
(lines 334 to 339)

Pope's advocacy of moral virtue in his poetry is also aloof: "not in Fancy's Maze he wander'd
long,/ But stoop'd to truth, and moralized song". Generally however, Pope's delineation of
"himself" is subtle and gradual, hidden behind the satirical attacks.
Elias F. Mengelv sees Pope's elevation of himself, sometimes to a mock-heroic level,
as a necessity in order to make the closing image - of himself praying for and nursing his
elderly mothervi - credible. If the typical assumption of the satirist as a malevolent man was
still held by the reader, this image of Pope at his most virtuous would be dismissed. While the
language remains witty it is not funny at all, genuinely deep emotion has infiltrated the satire.
David Jones Texts In Context Essay On Positive Values In The Poetry Of Pope & Swift

But though the poem closes dwelling on Pope's positive devotion, it is overshadowed by the
negative tone of events themselves. Dementia has caused a role reversal of parenting. Pope
has "to rock the cradle"; but while being a parent looks to the future this relationship is
leading nowhere. Throughout both poems we will see that positive values are often presented
beneath negative coating, and vice versa.
Swift's aspiration to moral virtuousness is initially very different. He and Pope mock
the same shortcomings of the human condition, but while Pope attacks all those around him,
Swift is part of the mass himself: "We all behold" (line 12). He writes frankly, even in a
positive light, about the more base elements of human character:

"How patiently you hear him groan!

How glad the case is not your own!"
(lines 29 & 30)

Swift's hyperbolic portraits are full of an odd admiration here: "Vain humankind! fantastic
race! The various follies who can trace?". They are given comic vitality by the punchiness of
his octosyllabic couplets:

"If with such talents Heaven hath blessed 'em,

Have I not reason to detest 'em?"
(lines 64 & 65)

Dennis Donaghuevii sees Verses On The Death Of Dr. Swift as being subversive, a factor often
mistaken for mere irony. Taking the controversial subjects of death and grieving, Swift creates
a subject for comedy. Geoffrey Hill claims that Swift achieves his moral purpose here by
subverting the natural order of his societyviii.
Swift's tone shifts radically in the second half of the poem however. He makes his
virtue explicit in the same way that Pope has done. He arouses sympathy by referring to his
virtuous actions, such as how he "gave the little wealth he had/To build a house for fools and
mad" (lines 479-80). He argues that his earlier writings preserved "Fair Liberty" in Ireland.
This demonstrates an important principle. Rather than merely recording the problems of the
world, satire has the power to change thingsix. The way in which Swift's entertaining
harshness does not corrupt his morals places him "in the first rank of agreeable moralists in
verse"x. Caricatures return in this half, but this time they are repulsive like Pope's. Swift even
repeats words from the first half, such as "envy". What was earlier a subject of comedy now
leads to tragedy. The constantly shifting tone in both poems has important implications –
positive and negative values are subjective, depending upon the particular satiric slant.

Peter Dixon sees the most positive aspect Epistle To Dr. Arbuthnot in the significance
of Pope's friendship to the Doctor himself. Pope and Arbuthnot's dialogue and interaction (for
this is how Dixon sees the poem, though this view is contentious and may be flawed)
embodies the positive values in intellectual debate itself. Pope writes to him without form or
ceremonies and the two give and take advice. Their friendship is dramatized:

. . .Still to one bishop Phillips seem a wit?

Still Sapho - A. Hold! for god's sake – you'll offend.
No names – be calm – learn prudence of a friend.
I too could write, and I am twice as tall;
But foes like these – P. One flatterer's worse than all!"

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David Jones Texts In Context Essay On Positive Values In The Poetry Of Pope & Swift

(lines 100-104)

The opening urgent language gives way to playfulness and hyperbole on "twice". Their
familiarity and good humour is endearing, especially considering the surrounding tone. Pope
has clearly listened to Arbuthnot's advice to not name the names of his subjects, as he declares
in his prose opening: "I have, for the most part, spared their names, and they may be escaped
being laughed at, if they please". Yet Pope dilutes this as a result of the poem's constant shift
in tone. His replacement of Edmund Curll's name with "This" is actually more offensive.
Early in Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift it appears that the poet dismisses the value of
friendship, by defining the (short) amounts of time that each friend will grieve his death. This
is actually the starting point for Swift to assert a new virtue – pragmatism. He is glad that his
friends care but acknowledges that they will move on. Although it seems distasteful, the best
must be made of any situation: "Oh! may we all for death prepare!/What has he left? and
who's his heir?". People must carry on, women will continue to play cards. However, Swift's
hyperbole should also be noted. He cites pragmatism as an ideal, but the closing sentiment of
the poem indicate that he would not be content for the legacy of his work to be lining dishes at
"the patry-cook's".
Swift does place value in friendship, but defines it by its absence, in his isolation:

In exile with a steady heart

He spent his life's defining part;
Where fully, pride and faction sway
Remote from St. John, Pope and Gay
(line 435)

Swift also comments on these friends' skill in writing, albeit within a framework of self-
depreciation. Even Pope has respect for other - mostly earlier - writers. Many see his satire as
an attempt to bring the works of Horace and Donne up to date.
The purity of Arbuthnot's character is another positive. He is an embodiment of values
which the poet seeks to uphold, and this is why he has been chosen as recipient of the letter
itself: "Dr Arbuthnot is the poet's true friend, the antithesis of the false flatterers and hostile
detractors who plague the successful satirist"xi. Arbuthnot does not fit into the world of
parasites whom play and profit on Pope's reputation. Friendship is a moral virtue in a world
where, in Pope's picture generally, moral virtue does not exist. Dixon focuses on the metaphor
of the friend as a physician. This builds upon imagery that began with Ecclesiasticus and was
common in the contemporary scenexii. Pope describes Arbuthnot as a "Friend to my life".
Dixon goes further:

"It is one of the poem's delightful minor ironies that these men of rhyme seek Pope's advice as
though he were their physician and friend. Yet they do not want to be cured but preserved in
their folly: "All fly to Twit'nam, and in humble strain/Apply to me to keep them mad or vain."
(lines 21-22)"xiii.

Epistle To Dr. Arbuthnot is a work of polarities between fawning admirers and hateful
detractors, as Pope puts it "If foes, they write, if friends, they read me dead". Yet the friend
lies between these extremes, opposing both in the process. Dixon's analysis culminates in the
idea that by building up the philosophy of friendship Pope is also able to perform a radical
feat, locating positive values in the genre of satire itself:

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David Jones Texts In Context Essay On Positive Values In The Poetry Of Pope & Swift

"Pope's analogy of the satirist as friend enables him to exalt his own poetical function. For the
satirist is considered a critic of his fellow-men who admonishes society only because, like a
true friend, he has society's best interests at heart. He is not afraid to blame, though he is also
pleased to praise when the opportunity presents itself"xiv.

Swift meanwhile does not elevate the moral importance of his poetry at first. He
contrarily dismisses it:

"For poetry, he's past his prime;

He takes an hour to find a rhyme;
His fire is out, his wit decayed,
His fancy sunk, his Muse a jade
I'd have him throw away his pen
But there's no talking to some men".
(lines 99 – 104)

However the second half of the poem conveys truer feelings once again. In a similar fashion
to Pope, Swift elevates the importance of satire as "a moral view designed/To cure the vices
of mankind" (313-314). Unfortunately this message is again damaged by contradictions due to
the shifting tone. Swift claims that he "lashed the vice but spared the name"; his satire does
not bear witness to this, with swipes at "Kind Lady Suffolk" or Edmund Curll.

Finally, Pope describes his unique independence as a writer as being entirely positive.
He was a key figure in the gradual move away from patronage that degraded writing to "Whig
state apparatus"xv during the Eighteenth Century. This is manifest in both the motivation
behind the Epistle, and also some of its most rhetoric passages. Pope can satirise because he
has the integrity of being: "un-plac'd, un-pension'd, no man's heir, or slave". That Pope is
proud to be the first independent writer in England is clear, it provides him with the security
to "maintain a poet's dignity and ease" (line 263). Pope communicates the positivity of his
independence, however, through comparison with a series of negative caricatures in the shape
of Atticus, Bufo and Sporus. Atticus demands dependence with the "little senate" laws that he
imposes on his friends, Bufo's portrait comes closer to a assessment of sponsorship in its
constant references to payment. The Sporus portrait is the pinnacle of corrupt social
dependence, and draws to a close three models connected by an increasing danger in
patronage. Dependence is even related to the devil, through a reference to Paradise Lost (317-
20). This, by opposition, makes Pope's independence more holy. These portraits are darker
than the refined Horatian satire to which Pope is often compared. Howard Weinbrot argues
that Epistle To Dr. Arbuthnot is closer in spirit to the angry satirist Juvenalxvi.
Critics such as Hammond believe that Pope’s depiction of his objective standpoint
through Christian virtue is unconvincing. They argue that he "was covering the tracks of the
truth about his literary and commercial success" and point to other contradictions such as
Pope's description of writing as an original sin, in between passages on his literary virtue.
Hammond also contends that Pope's comfortable existence is proof against his view that his
was an age where neglected genius bloomed then died. Yet Hammond’s argument ignores the
constantly shifting tone of the satire. Pope is not attempting to formulate a cohesive, logical
argument. He has created a stylised character that can evoke conflicting emotions through
overlapping positive and negative values.
There lies a good point of conclusion. Both poems are positive about the concept of
virtuous man – often personified as the author – but neither are moral discourses. Satire is a

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David Jones Texts In Context Essay On Positive Values In The Poetry Of Pope & Swift

process to criticise the follies and vices of mankind, not paint an idyllic portrait of them. Nor
is didacticism their main purpose. As satires, the communication of positive values is impeded
by contradictions, uncertainties and the shifting tone. Nevertheless, there is often positivity
beneath the surface. Brean Hammond sums up the impression that Epistle To Dr. Arbuthnot
leaves:

"Pope comes across as the supremely rational poet, the ideal spokesman for the public values
of his age, the poet who, through his art, shaped his life into the paradigmatic statement of
what it was to be a well-balanced, moderate, integrated eighteenth-century man. It is
important . . . that his poetry reflects these qualities."xvii

2091 Words.

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David Jones Texts In Context Essay On Positive Values In The Poetry Of Pope & Swift

Bibliography
Printed
Abrams, M.H. & Greenblatt, S, ed. The Norton Anthology Of English Literature: Seventh
Edition, Volume 1.
USA: Norton, 1999.
Source of all quotations from Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift and most of those from Epistle To Dr. Arbuthnot

Donaghue, Denis, ed. Johnathan Swift: A Critical Anthology.

Great Britain: Penguin Book Ltd, 1971.
Especially for: the essay by Denis Donaghue The Sin Of Wit
William Hazlitt's Lecture On The English Poets
Geoffrey Hill’s Jonathan Swift: The Poetry Of “Reaction”

Donaghue, Denis. Jonathan Swift: A Critical Introduction.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969.

Dixon, Peter. The World Of Pope's Satires: An Introduction To The Epistles and Imitations.
London: Methuen, 1968

Hammond, Brean S. Pope: Harvester New Readings

Brighton: Harvester, 1986

Mack, Maynard, ed. Essential Articles For The Study Of Alexander Pope.
USA: Frank Cass & Co. Ltd. 1964
Especially for the essay by Elias F. Mengel Jr, Patterns of Imagery in Pope's Arbuthnot

Newton-de Molina, ed. On Literary Intention: Critical Essays.

Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1976
Especially for the essay by W.K. Wimsatt and M.C. Beardsley The Intentional Fallacy

Internet
Theall, Dr D.F. ed, Alexander Pope (1688-1744) Epistles to Several Persons: Epistle to Dr.
Arbuthnot
University Of Toronto Libraries (1997)
http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/rp/poems/pope14.html
An electronic version of Epistle To Dr. Arbuthnot used for some quotations.

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7
i In Patterns of imagery in Pope's Arbuthnot Elias F. Mengel, Jr identifies a (perhaps unconvincing) chain of imagery in
the Epistle. It runs: animal-filth-persecution-virtuous man. The concept of virtuous man is a positive image asserted
after a string of negative ones.
ii Hammond, Brean S. Pope: Harvester New Readings.
iii This is the assertion of W.K. Wimsatt and M.C. Beardsley in The Intentional Fallacy.
iv Brean Hammond utilises the theory of Frenchman Pierre Machery, which determines the authorial intention of a text
through what it does not say, to issue this warning: "what Pope reveals of himself is not, in any naïve sense, what is
true, nor is it (equally naively) a pack of lies, but rather an ideological construction of self". [Hammond, Brean S. Pope:
Harvester New Readings.]
v Elias F. Mengel, Jr. Patterns of imagery in Pope's Arbuthnot
vi Brean Hammond sees this closing section as an attempt by Pope to redress the balance, having "gone a little too far in
his militant brand of Virtue" and turned this positive value slightly sour. [Hammond, Brean S. Pope: Harvester New
Readings.]
vii Donaghue, Denis' The Sin Of Wit from Jonathan Swift: A Critical Introduction, 1969. Reproduced in Johnathan
Swift: A Critical Anthology
viii “The situation of Verses On The Death of Dr. Swift is defeat, either by bodily humiliation or the trivia of daily
encounters . . . wit converts the necessitous failure into moral and rhetorical victory. The prime significance of [the
poem] is that it challenges and reverses in terms of metaphor the world's routine of power and, within the same
parentheses, considers all alternatives including anarchy”. Geoffrey Hill, from Jonathan Swift: The Poetry of
"Reaction" in Vickers, P (Ed) Jonathan Swift: A Critical Anthology.
ix Brean Hammond sees this as an unanswered question raised by Epistle To Dr. Arbuthnot's moral elevation of satire.
[Hammond, Brean S. Pope. Harvester New Readings.]
x William Hazlitt, from Lecture On The English Poets, 1818, in Jonathan Swift: A Critical Anthology, page 104.
xi Dixon, Peter. The World Of Pope's Satires: An Introduction To The Epistles and Imitations
xii "A faithful friend is the medicine of life" quotes Addison, according to Peter Dixon's The World Of Pope's Satires:
An Introduction To The Epistles and Imitations
xiii Dixon, Peter. The World Of Pope's Satires: An Introduction To The Epistles and Imitations
xiv Dixon, Peter. The World Of Pope's Satires: An Introduction To The Epistles and Imitations
xv Hammond, Brean S. Pope: Harvester New Readings.
xvi Hammond, Brean S. Pope: Harvester New Readings.
xvii Hammond, Brean S. Pope: Harvester New Readings.