Daily inter mountain. [volume] (Butte, Mont.) 1881-1901, 1901-04-06
MRS. McNULTA'S PAPER.

Alexander Pope, poet. satir.st and the
most brilliant writer Of his day, bears
20 the world almost two distinct char
a.ters as viewed in the light of two
different centuries. His own century,
thoroughly aware of his moral obliquity
get judged him by the moral standard
of his day. The nineteenth century took
MS mission as poet more sincerely,
and condemned the man as only his
,nost bitter enemies denounced him in
his own day.
Taine sums up his character as whim-
steal, susceptible, crafty, malignant, ar
tificial, punctilious and exacting IN the
extreme. His writings as dazzlingly
brilliant, pedantic; wanting in power
through lack of and evident arti1ciality.
His mind active and Industrious. ap-
r:opriating all poetic elegancies and ex-
cellencies, all happy epithets and inge-
nous terms Of expression and sorrow
rhythms, making him very master of
hrilliancy of expression. His religion
and politics, as of the weakest, quoting
letter written by Pope to Atterburg
in III, which said: I'm politics I think
no further than to prefer the peace of
my life in any government under which
live, nor in my religion than to pre-
| serve the peace of my conscience in
airy church with which I communicate.
hope all churches and governments
are so of God. as they are rightly un-
| cerstood and rightly administered, and
when they are, or may be wrong, l leave
1t to God above to mend or reform
| tncm.''
Green calls him Child of the revo-
| lution; that one great poet of the time.
a,tributinig to his poor weak body and
1 ltN ,lxs
ness and morbid temperament. In char
acter, vain, selfish, affected, loving
small intrigues and petty lying. Incred-
IDLY jealous and touchy, singing with
malignant venom those who came
PEAR him. His nobler qualities as his
sympathies varied and intense, though
| living within a narrow range, low
ing intensely the few he cared
| for, loyal to friends, but still
more loyalty to his ideal of art and one
of his finest characteristics as being his
| high sense of literary dignity, breaking
with distain through the traditions OF
patronage which hold degraded mer
of letters into sycophants and hangers.
on of the great
1t was the prostitution of his ideal thai
| developed his sarcasm and poured Ou
to the world in his Dunciad his depth Of
spleen and biting scorn. 1t was at tn.
time when every rhymer claimed to b,
poet, every Pathfinder a critic. ever,
chronicler an historian, every romance
of rhetorical nOthingness. a politician
that Pope's Dunciad. a noble vindicatiol
of literature, swept from the path of let
tiers this herd of pretenders. This mar
vellously brilliant mind was always tn
dweller in a body weak and sickly. John
son says his life was long disease"
Alexander Pope was born May 22d
1858, in Lombard street. London. Hi
father a Catholic linen draper. sool
after the birth of his son retired from
business and lived in the quiet Of Bin
field, in Winson Forest, where the chill
became a student and gathered with hi
already precOciously expanding mind
those jewels Of rural edge, which wer
afterwards in their new setting to daS.l
the world. When a man. Pope was bu