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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
For critics in the Age of Pope the classical epic was the only genuine epic. It was regarded as a principal, if not always the supreme, form of literature; as an unsurpassable vehicle of moral instruction, of ageless wisdom lightly cloaked by an exterior of violence and adventure, of sentiments “whose truth convinced at sight We find.” Stressing the permanently valuable as they did, these critics spoke of Homer and Virgil as the greatest of geniuses in poetry but rarely treated them as human beings who had actually lived in specific times and places: both were visualized as “conscious” craftsmen skilled in adapting plots to enforce basic “lessons” and equally skilled in blending into ideal harmony such elements of the epic as action and episode, description and dialogue, the supernatural and the human. To be sure, historical backgrounds were not entirely ignored: Pope wrote at considerable length of Homer's “religion, country, genius of his age”; and men of wit like Swift and Dennis compared the excellences of ancient and of modern literature in general. With its emphasis upon matters of form and universality, an essentially Aristotelian approach was, nevertheless, the dominant approach of Augustan England.
1 Introduction to the Literature of Europe, 3rd ed. (London, 1847), iii, 475; Coleridge's Miscellaneous Criticism, ed. T. M. Raysor (London, 1936), p. 13.
2 Lectures on the Truly Eminent English Poets (London, 1807), ii, 499-500.
3 Biographical, Literary, and Philosophical Essays (New York and Philadelphia, 1844), p. 332.
4 Essays and Tales in Prose (Boston, 1853), ii, 147.
5 The Reflector, ed. Leigh Hunt (London, 1811), ii, 269; Hallam, iii, 474.
6 Letters (Edinburgh, 1811), vi, 302-303.
7 Diary, Reminiscences, and Correspondence, ed. Thomas Sadler (New York, 1877), i, 301.
8 Letters, ed. H. N. Coleridge (London, 1895), ii, 314.
9 Quarterly Rev., vi (Oct. 1811), 223.
10 Letters on the Character and Poetical Genius of Lord Byron (London, 1824), pp. 440-441.
11 Thomas Medwin, Conversations of Lord Byron (London, 1824), pp. 247-248.
12 Works (New York, 1853), iv, 116 ff.
13 Quart. Rev., xxxv (March 1827), 519.
14 Blackwood's Edinburgh Mag., ii (Dec. 1817), 269-270.
15 The Lusiad, trans. Musgrave (London, 1826), p. xvi.
16 Quart. Rev., xxv (July 1821), 428.
17 Medwin, p. 107; The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth, The Later Years, ed. Ernest de Selincourt (Oxford, 1939), p. 1010.
18 J. B. Trotter, Memoirs of the Latter Years of Charles James Fox (Philadelphia, 1812), p. 324.
19 See Poems by Hartley Coleridge, with a Memoir by His Brother (London, 1851), i, clvi.
20 Specimens of the Classic Poets (London, 1814), i, 7.
21 Coleridge, Works, vi, 312-313; Introductions to the Study of the Greek Classic Poets (Boston, 1842), p. 179.
22 “General Observations,” in The Iliad of Homer, trans. Alexander Pope, a new ed. (London, 1817), i, clxxvii.
23 R. Jamieson, Popular Heroic and Romantic Ballads (Edinburgh, 1814), p. 249.
24 “Lectures on Poetry,” New Monthly Mag., 2nd Ser., ii (1821), 1.
25 Edinburgh Rev., xxiv (Nov. 1814), 41.
26 Taylor, Historic Survey of German Poetry (London, 1830), i, 291; De Quincey, Historical and Critical Essays (Boston, 1856), i, 266.
27 Correspondence of Gilbert Wakefield with the Late Rt. Hon. Charles James Fox (London, 1813), pp. 58-59.
28 Miscellaneous Criticism, pp. 160-161.
29 Complete Works, ed. T. E. Welby (London, 1927), v, 238.
30 See his Examination of the Primary Argument of the Iliad (London, 1821).
31 Quart. Rev., xliv (1831), 150.
32 Thomas J. Mathias, Observations on the Writings and on the Character of Mr. Gray (London, 1815), p. 78.
33 Isaac Disraeli, Amenities of Literature, 2nd ed. (New York, 1841), ii, 144.
34 Aikin, Letters from a Father to His Son, a new ed. (London, 1838), p. 12; Wordsworth, Letters, pp. 506-507.
35 Cottle, Alfred: An Epic Poem (Newburyport, 1814), p. 22; Godwin, The Life of Geoffrey Chaucer (London, 1803), i, 323-324.
36 Miscellaneous Criticism, pp. 148-149.
37 Complete Works, ed. P. P. Howe (London and Toronto, 1930), v, 17.
38 The Life of Milton (Dublin, 1797), pp. 219, 289.
39 The Poetical Works of John Milton (London, 1801), p. 56.
40 Coleridge's Miscellaneous Criticism, p. 148; Works, vi, 479.
41 Reminiscences (New York, 1825), i, 12.
42 Extracts from the Diary of a Lover of Literature (Ipswich, 1810), p. 209.
43 Edinburgh Rev., xxv (June 1815), 150.
44 Essays and Marginalia (London, 1851), i, 23.
45 History of Roman Literature (Philadelphia, 1827), i, 79.
48 Recollections of the Table-Talk of Samuel Rogers (London, 1856), p. 209.
47 Keble's Lectures on Poetry, 1832-1841, trans. E. K. Francis (Oxford, 1912), ii, 375, 377-378, 393.