Popery

ALEXANDER POPE--Edith Sitwell--Cosmopolitan ($4).

Says Poet Edith Sitwell of Poet Pope: "I may say, with the deepest humility, what Pope is reputed to have said of Dryden: 'Had I been born early enough, I should have known and loved him. . . . His principal fault was that he suffered from a constitutional inhibition against speaking the truth, save on occasions when, if we except the esthetic point of view, the truth would have been better left unspoken. But I have so often found both these faults in myself, that I do not dare to blame them. . . .'"

Alexander Pope was born in London, 1688, of fairly well-to-do elderly parents. A delicate child, he was set upon by a cow when he was three; this accident, says Biographer Sitwell, may have resulted in his subsequent deformity. As a grown man he could not dress himself, had to wear a stiff corset when he walked, supported himself with a cane. Precocious rhymester, ambitious poet, he intended to be not only great but "correct." At 25 he was one of the foremost literary men in England, received -L-5,000 or -L-6,000 for his translation of the Iliad. He was in love at least once, with Martha Blount, but realizing the hopelessness of his getting married, he transferred his affections to food. His most famed affair (purely conversational, literary) was with Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Says Biographer Sitwell: "Pope's tongue was in his cheek. Pope was a lifelong friend of great Dean Jonathan Swift, 21 years his senior. Swift was parsimonious, but generous to his friends; once when Pope and Gay came to see him he asked them to stay to supper--they had supped; to drink--they preferred talk. The Dean then figured how much he had saved by their refusal, gracefully presented each with half-a-crown."

Even when Pope was an acknowledged great man he could stoop to trickery; once he hid some letters of his in Lord Oxford's study, hoping they would be stolen and published, saying he was afraid they would be. When Lord Oxford guarded them too carefully Pope was annoyed, had a hard time getting them back.

The Significance. Author Sitwell thinks Pope was not only the most correct, most polished of English poets, but one of the greatest. Of late years the stock of the Romantics has slumped, that of the 18th Century has risen. Edith Sitwell has not said in this book that Pope is the greatest English poet, but soon someone will.

The Author. Edith Sitwell, sister of Osbert (TIME, March 3, 1930) and Sacheverell Sitwell, adult enfants terribles of literary England, is middleaged, skinny, wraithlike; "in early youth took an intense dislike to simplicity, morris-dancing and every kind of sport except reviewer-baiting, and has continued these distastes ever since." Other books: The Mother and Other Poems, Clowns Houses, Bucolic Comedies, Sleeping Beauty, Elegy on Dead Fashion.

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