Alexander Pope

kind of poetry that Pope, with its tightly-controlled heroic couplets, has not been in fashion with readers or critics for a couple of hundred years. And because of that fact, Pope and the poetry of this entire period is less accessible to us than it ought to be; modern readers read less poetry than did eighteenth-century readers and, even those who read poetry are simply not used to verse like this. The end result is that it is hard for us to see what contemporaries recognized in Pope, what they found so striking, and what caused them to admire his works.

Alexander Pope, painted by Charles Jervas in the 1710s, the decade when he emerged as the most prominent poet of his generation.
Alexander Pope, painted by Charles Jervas in the 1710s, the decade when he emerged as the most prominent poet of his generation.

Pope with a crown of laurel leaves, painted by Godfrey Kneller in around 1721. The idea here is that Pope is being depicted as the poet "laureate," something he could not be in real life because of his Catholicism. [Wikimedia Commons]

Pope with a crown of laurel leaves, painted by Godfrey Kneller in around 1721. The idea here is that Pope is being depicted as the poet “laureate,” something he could not be in real life because of his Catholicism. [Wikimedia Commons]