Pope's couplet expresses a dilemma that was of particular importance during the Augustan Age -- the inadequacy of reason to the discovery of design. Mortals forced by circumstances to judge and to act, we use inference and interpretation in what we realize is a futile attempt to bridge the gap between our limited perspective and a creator's omniscience.
In Tom Jones, Fielding raises this dilemma in a humorous way:
This Work may, indeed, be considered as a great Creation of our own; and for a little Reptile of a Critic to presume to find Fault with any of its Parts, without knowing the Manner in while the Whole is connected, and before he comes to the final Catastrophe, is a most presumptuous absurdity.[2]
Fielding's creation is one that relies on its readers for -- and to some extent involves them in -- its realization. As R.S. Crane noted in 1950, "we may be said to have grasped the plot in the full artistic sense only when we have analyzed [our] interplay of desires and expectations sequentially in relation to the incidents by which it is produced."[3] But Crane himself failed to follow the method he suggested, and thirty-five years later, most accounts of Tom Jones, even those in the reader-response vein, are still synchronic -- they make no consistent attempt to follow the stages by which out "superior knowledge" is acquired.[4] Such analyses fail to acknowledge the extent to which the judgments we make as readers implicate us in the same "final Catastrophe" that envelops the characters; the analyses allow us to judge with impunity and without remorse.[5]
John Preston was the first to note the importance of difference between a first and second reading of Tom Jones, pointing out that on a second reading
we have a sense of duality not only in the book itself, but in our own response to it. We recognize our "blindness" just because we no longer suffer from it. We know and do not know simultaneously: we are both outside and inside the pattern of events. . . . [The reader] is the observer of his own ironic mistakes.[6]Preston, like Crane, argues that Fielding's plot was meant to reflect the chaotic nature of experience rather than, as has more often been suggested, universal order. Like Crane he nonetheless believes that the novel offers a "clarification of the process of understanding" -- that it can teach us how "to judge well" (pp. 114, 116).
More recently, the argument has come to something of an impasse. On one side, the optimism concerning the didactic efficacy of the novel seems to have waned: one author's recent assertion, for example, that "if anyone learns to judge better, the reader learns" is accompanied by this caveat: "But even that may be too broad a conclusion, for what the reader learns best is caution. . . . the reader of Tom Jones comes to realize that experience resists analysis."[7] On the other side, critics such as Wolfgang Iser (who takes seriously Fielding's repeated attribution of sagacity to his readers) argue that the experience of reading Tom Jones is intended to "serve as training for the reader's sense of discernment."[8] I would argue that although Fielding does believe in the value of judging carefully, he does not believe it is possible to judge entirely well -- doing so would require bridging the gap, playfully acknowledged by Fielding in the passage quoted, between judgment from within events and judgment after the fact.
Critics have disagreed over how we should read Fielding's comparison of his novel with Creation: those who focus on the chaos of the "Parts" tend to see the comparison as ironic; those who stand back to admire the "Whole" tend to take it at face value.[9] Whatever we decide about the tenor of Fielding's remarks, in both the novel and the Augustan universe, chaotic elements are ultimately harmonized. And the author's essential power, both to create and to order this chaos, is his control over knowledge. Nothing is more important to the comedy or the drama of Tom Jones than the discrepancy between what we know and what the characters know in any given situation, and our awareness of the extent to which a character is ignorant is always a determining factor in how we evaluate his or her action. But what raises Tom Jones above the level of simple farce is that involves the reader as well as the characters in what we may call the comedy of knowledge, and it implicates the reader in the condition of ignorance and partial awareness that it portrays. If the "final Catastrophe" is to the novel as Apocalypse is to Creation, then like the Apocalypse it brings everyone to judgment, including the reader.
Though its repercussions are widespread, the problem of knowledge has a focal point in Tom Jones: Jenny Jones, alias Mrs. Waters, and alias, quite appropriately, Mrs. Supple (wife of the gormandizing Parson Supple). Though Jenny herself is a minor character, she nonetheless is the primary agent of epistemological chaos in the novel, both in her interactions with other characters and in what she conceals from the reader; she is the wellspring of ignorance. Her appearances in Book 1, Books 9 and 10, and Book 18 respectively begin, complicate, and resolve Tom's adventures and play a pivotal role in developing the didactic implications of the plot. An outline of the shifting territory of the known in and around Jenny should help to illuminate the full significance of Fielding's "final Catastrophe."
At its most basic level, the problem of knowledge is a problem of facts. Characters are revealed to us in how they choose and evaluate evidence, and our understanding of personality in turn determines what we will consider causal when we reconstruct their motivations.
Allworthy's housekeeper, Mrs. Wilkins, and her friend, the "elderly Matron," are excellent examples of that lower order of characters whose reasoning is transparent to the reader and is clearly flawed both morally and logically. In their attempt to determine who is the foundling's mother, the women "scrutinize the Characters of several young Girls" in the neighborhood and agree that Jenny is "the likeliest Person to have committed this Fact" (p. 48; 1.6). This conclusion, the narrator discloses, seized upon by Mrs. Wilkins, of Jenny's having been seen about Allworthy's house before the baby was left there (p. 49; 1.6).
Although the "sagacious" Mrs. Wilkins recognizes the significance of these visits only in the light of the matron's malicious suspicions, she confronts Jenny and proceeds "rather to pass Sentence on the Prisoner, than to accuse her" (p. 49; 1.6). Allworthy, and the reader, "might have required some stronger Evidence to have convicted her; but she saved her Accusers any such Trouble, by freely confessing the whole Fact with which she was charged" (p. 50; 1.6). Jenny's confession we regard as a lucky coincidence for Mrs. Wilkins, since we consider her evidence not only unsatisfactory but even comically inadequate. But the whole comedy of this sequence becomes clear only after we learn that Mrs. Wilkins's inadmissible evidence was indeed significant, though utterly misinterpreted (Jenny was at the house to take care of Bridget during her lying in), and that Jenny's new clothes, the object of the matron's envy, were bribes from Bridget to silence Jenny (pp. 941-42; 18.7). our "understanding" of character -- of both Mrs. Wilkins's and Bridget's -- has assured our ignorance of fact.
Allworthy's arraignment of Jenny in Book 1, Chapter 7, is a somewhat subtler treatment of evidence and inference. Since Jenny's guilt is not at issue (she has confessed), Allworthy is primarily concerned with assessing rather than ascertaining facts. As he does so, we see the effect of prejudice on his interpretation. Allworthy's principal prejudices, all in Jenny's favor, are three. First, as he has lost three children of his own and feels tenderness for Tom, he is inclined to view Jenny's disposition of the child as an altruistic act. Second, since he has heretofore considered Jenny sensible, he is inclined to think her susceptible to reasonable treatment. And third, the "Openness and Sincerity" of her confession persuade him of her capacity for reform (pp. 53, 54). Even when Jenny refuses to divulge the identity of the father, her appeals to "Honour" and "Religion" convince him of her integrity, especially since she risks his displeasure to preserve it. In all of these particulars, Allworthy's interpretation of Jenny's behavior reflects his values more than it fixes hers. Indeed, though we do not feel superior to him the way we did to Mrs. Wilkins, we are likely to commend his humanity rather than his discernment of human nature, and we may find amusing his reasoning regarding the relative influence of vice and virtue on human behavior. Nevertheless, his determinations prove to be essentially correct, despite his ignorance, and it is important to note that he relies in this scene not on discernment or even prudence but on a generous heart. He leaves Jenny's ultimate judgment to God, and by this humility he is saved later humiliation when the truth is revealed.
Evidence is again the issue when Bridget Allworthy appears in the next chapter (1.8), although here it is our selection of the facts, rather than hers, that is significant. Bridget Allworthy surprises Mrs. Wilkins and us when, after eavesdropping on the interview between Jenny and her brother, she defends Jenny. In the ensuing exchange, we see what looks like a reason for her behavior. Mrs. Wilkins's remark that at least Jenny is not "vain of her Face" and Bridget's condemnation of the "wanton Behaviour" of pretty girls (p. 57) remind us that Bridget has an inordinate suspicion of men and is herself "so far from regretting Want of Beauty, that she never mention'd that perfection (if it can be called one) without Contempt" (p. 36: 1.2). If we care to reconstruct her motivation, these are the facts we will choose. We simply do not recognize her "violent Fit of Illness" (p. 49; 1.6) or Allworthy's concomitant three-month absence (p. 38; 1.3) as evidence, because the characterization of Bridget we have been given supports no such inference.[10] In contrast to our encounter with Mrs. Wilkins and her friend, in this instance our ignorance of character leads to ignorance of fact.
Books 9 and 10 take place at Upton and introduce us to Mrs. Waters -- or
rather, to a "Woman stript half naked, under the Hands of a Ruffian" (p.
496; 9.2). We discover almost immediately that the ruffian is Ensign
Northerton (Tom's erstwhile antagonist, slanderer of Sophia and now
seducer of Mrs. Waters), but it is several chapters before the woman
acquires a name. Rescued providentially by Tom, she is escorted to the
nearest inn, where her state of undress arouses suspicion in the
proprietors. The landlady will have no "Whores in Rages" in her
establishment (p. 500; 9.3). Appearance and the "Ignorance of her
Quality" (p. 506; 9.4) prejudice the landlady against Tom's companion and
precipitate the Battle of Upton.
Mrs. Waters's name is introduced not by the narrator but by the
"Serjeant," who recognizes her as the wife of Captain Waters: "I am
certain I am not deceived," he says, "you can be no other Person than
Captain Waters's Lady" (p. 505; 9.4). This affirmation by
negative statement, called an Irish Bull, is brought to the level of art
in Maclachlan, Fitzpatrick's fortuitously appearing friend: "What Wife? .
. . do not I know Mrs. Fitzpatrick very well, and don't I see that
the Lady, whom the Gentlemen who stands here in his Shirt is lying in Bed
with, is none of her?" (530; 10.2).
The narrator subsequently refers to the woman as Mrs. Waters, but in
questions of identity the source of one's knowledge determines its
value. What the sergeant says in his further disclosures about Mrs.
Waters and Ensign Northerton adds to the credibility of his
identification, but when we accept what he know we adopt his ignorance as
well.
After introducing the woman, the narrator concedes that we might be "very
eager to know who this Lady was, and how she fell into the Hands of Mr.
Northerton" (p. 499; 9.3). Having satisfied our curiosity on
matters of more pressing interest -- the seduction -- he finally gives us
"a fuller Account of Mrs. Waters" (p. 518; 9.7) in the last
chapter of Book 9. Following an animadversion on curiosity and vanity,
the narrator explains that, concerning Mrs. Waters's history, good
breeding has rendered Tom "contented to remain in Ignorance, the rather
as he was not without Suspicion, that were some Circumstances which must
have raised her Blushes, had she related the whole Truth" (p. 519;
9.7). Counting on no such delicacy in his readers, and being "very
desirous to satisfy them all," the narrator proposes to relate to us "the
real Fact" of the matter. What we learn is not more than we, and Tom,
have already suspected. And though there are some new details of itinerary
and of perfidy, most of what we are told consists of known information,
plus a few aporetic gestures -- "we shall not at resent . . . . resolve."
"it is not so extremely clear" (p. 519), "I cannot determine" (p. 521)
-- all of which are transparent to the sagacious reader. But, by
professing to take us into his confidence, and by divulging facts that
fit our expectation, the narrator promotes a sense of reliable awareness
in us and leaves us feeling that we know Mrs. Waters.
If we are therefore inclined to feel superior to Tom, we might be
chastened to discover that we have overlooked a number of clues as to the
real identity of Mrs, Waters. One of these, "there were some
Circumstances which must have raised her Blushes, had she related the
whole Truth," already has been quoted: like most of the clues, it echoes
the sense of Allworthy's sermonette, after which Jenny says, "As to my
Concern for what is past, I know you will spare my Blushes of Repetition"
(p. 54; 1.7). Others are even more obvious: "Women, to their Glory be it
spoken, are more generally capable of that violent and apparently
disinterested Passion of Love, which seeks only the Good of its Object,
than Men" (spoke by the narrator, p. 520; 9.7) versus "Love . . . can
never be violent" and "Love . . . always seeks the Good of its Object"
(spoken by Allworthy, pp. 52, 53; 1.7); the narrator's gallant refusal
"to do a Violence to our Nature by any Comments to the Disadvantage of
the loveliest Part of the Creation" (p. 520; 9.7) versus Allworthy's stern
epiplexis, "How base and mean must that Woman be . . . who can bear to
level herself with the lowest Animal, and to sacrifice all that is great
and noble in her, all her Heavenly Part, to an Appetite which she hath in
common with the vilest Branch of the Creation!" (p. 52: 1.7).
As I have suggested, the primary or base appeal of the whole of Book 9,
chapter 5, depends on the reader's possessing the very appetite
associated by Allworthy with that "vilest Branch"; further, throughout
the seventh chapter of Book 9 the narrator justifies his concealment of
Jenny's true identity (and beneath that, an doubly obscured innocence)
with language and reasoning that run directly contrary to the warning
Allworthy issues to Jenny in our presence (1.7). In light of this, it is
interesting to note that immediately following Book 9, chapter 7, at the
beginning of Book 10, Fielding launches his attack on critics who presume
to understand the parts without having comprehended the whole. Tom at
least has the excuse of good breeding for his ignorance, and that of
having met Jenny; we can only plead that we were misled by the company
she keeps.
Book 10 exhibits the comic possibilities of mistaken identity in
incidents centered on Mrs. Waters. Fitzpatrick mistakes her for his wife
(p. 530; 10.2), Maclachlan for Tom's (p. 531; 10.2), and Squire Western
thinks she might be Sophia (p. 552; 10.7). Clearly the most important of
these mistakes is Fitzpatrick's: it is the occasion of his resentment
towards Tom ("for you have bate me"), resentment that will later
issue in the duel; and it is a comic presentiment of sorts, since Jenny,
shortly after departing Upton, will become Fitzpatrick's wife, in which
capacity she will make a crucial discovery or two in Book 18. Such is
the coherence of accident and universal confusion.
In addition to the number of incidents in which identity is mistaken,
there are several instances in the Upton sequence in which people
do know each other fail to meet. Sophia and the real Mrs.
Fitzpatrick come and go without being apprehended and without running
into each other (they are cousins); Western arrives hours after Jenny has
seen to it that Sophia has left, and he departs "without taking the least
Notice of his Nephew Fitzpatrick" (p. 553; 10.7). But the pivotal
meeting that does not take place is the one between Partridge and Mrs.
Waters, who both know what we do not, though one knows more than the other.
As Martin Battestin has noted, "The adventures at Upton, where the lines
of the plot converge and separate again, stand as the keystone" of the
novel's structure (p. 149); one could be even more specific and say that,
inasmuch as the plot of Tom Jones is predicated on
misunderstanding, Mrs. Waters herself is the keystone. We have noted
that the landscape of identity as it develops around Jenny is composed
almost entirely of negative elements and occurrences. She is not Captain
Waters's wife, not Fitzpatrick's wife, not Tom's wife, and not Sophia; Tom
meets but does not know her, Partridge knows but does not meet her; she
is described in the language of negation, characterized by aporia, and
she functions essentially to frustrate apprehension.
Mrs. Waters's farewell performance actually begins in the last chapter of
Book 17, when she visits Tom in prison after she has discovered his
whereabouts from the man he impaled, Mr. Fitzpatrick. The interview does
little to advance knowledge, however. Tom informs her of "many Things
which she well knew before," and of "several Facts of which she was
ignorant, as the Adventure of the Muff" (p. 911; 17.9), of which we
already know. In Book 18, chapter 2, the first surprising discovery is
made. Partridge overhears Tom and Mrs. Waters discussing Upton, and for
the first time, he sees the Lady (they have been side by side, in the
Battle of Upton, but not face to face). Taking great care to ascertain
the facts, Partridge makes sure that she was the woman Tom went to bed
with at Upton and then cries, "Why then the Lord have Mercy upon your
Soul, and forgive you, . . . but as sure as I stand here alive, you have
been a-Bed with your own Mother" (p. 915). We now know what Partridge
knows, and we share his ignorance; that is, we know who Jenny is, but now
who she isn't.
The second important encounter occurs off stage but is (partially)
reported in a letter Jenny sends Tom: "I have seen a Gentleman, from
whom I have learnt something concerning you which greatly surprizes and
affects me" (p. 916; 18.2). The letter arrives as Partridge returns from
his unsuccessful search for Jenny. We then accompany Partridge to Mrs.
Miller's where he encounters Mr. Allworthy. Partridge relates his
history, some of which reflects poorly on Allworthy, and then divulges
that Tom is commiserating with his "mother" in the prison. We stay with
Partridge, whose peculiar complex of ignorance is essential to Fielding's
purpose at this point, until the end of chapter 6, when Mrs. Waters
arrives and, in the next chapter, reveals the true facts identity for
Allworthy and for us.
The man Jenny met, referred to in the letter, was Dowling. As Bridget's
attorney and Blifil's accomplice, Dowling actually knows more than Jenny
does, but he is ignorant of her identity, mistaking her for Mrs.
Fitzpatrick. Through Dowling, Jenny learns who Tom actually is, and the
moment we have left him alone she arrives to relieve Tom's
(mis)apprehension. Finally, she lets loose one more vital piece of
ignorance -- her assumption that Dowling is working against Tom by
Allworthy's order -- an error of fact that Allworthy hastens to correct,
and from which he deduces Blifil's complicity in Tom's misfortunes.
Either Dowling's ignorance or Partridge's awareness of Jenny's identity
might have been sufficient to bring about an unraveling of the truth, and
Jenny herself could have resolved the matter of Tom's identity. But it
is the interplay of all three characters that produces the dramatic
extremes of Tom's reversal of fortune. Tom is brought to his lowest
point by Partridge's factual ignorance and triumphs over Blifil when
Dowling's awareness of fact is exposed through Jenny's mistake. Again,
Jenny is the sine qua non in the comedy of knowledge.
Jenny wraps up Tom's story and provides the closure she has on two other
occasions denied us, but there is a loose end. The character undone by
Jenny's revelation, Bridget Allworthy, we knew as a prude, an old maid,
and a man hater. What now of her illicit love affair, her secret
travail, her life of deception? Issues enough to fill another novel
arise -- or would arise, if Bridget were not dead and buried many books ago.
In retrospect, the territory of our ignorance expands so significantly at
the novel's Apocalypse that we have larger and more personal deficits to
address than the forfeit of a passionate Bridget. The understanding we
thought we had reached with Fielding, our mastery of what Iser calls the
"virtual standpoint" (p. 53), must now be reassessed. Iser and others who
discuss the reader in Tom Jones often seem to regard our
perspective as privileged and stable, even as autonomous. Iser says with
confidence:
What Iser says about the aesthetic pleasure of the novel is true of a
first reading: as Preston points out, we often enjoy a position of
epistemological superiority to the characters, or suppose we do, and we
often have the feeling that we are finding things out for ourselves,
albeit things that Fielding has put there.[12] But only by doing violence either to Iser's
or to Fielding's intent can we agree that the didactic purpose for the
novel is to provide "training" for our "sense of discernment." That is,
we can agree only if we make Iser out to be saying that it is not our
discernment, but only our sense of discernment that is developed,
or if we suppose Fielding to be teaching us that reason, properly trained,
is indeed superior to "any given situation." Iser clearly does not mean
to say the first, and Fielding equally clearly does not believe the second.
All knowledge, and thus all reasoning and discernment, is limited and
situationally determinate, and all superiority is relative. To say
otherwise is to miss the most engaging implication of the novel's
climactic disclosures, to ignore the fact that they involve us as well as
the characters in a comic reevaluation. Subsequent to the "final
Catastrophe" we, or we as first readers, are revealed to have had an
epistemological status, a fallibility and a dependency, no different from
the characters'. We do not mind this demotion, and may not even notice
it, because in the instant of our finding out the truth we cease to
occupy our previous position, and we distance ourselves from the
character of ignorance that we as first readers have acquired. But in the
distance between a superior and a more superior epistemological
position, and in the instant of our translation from one to the other,
lies the real lesson of Tom Jones -- a lesson in humility.
The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling, ed.
Fredson Bowers, Wesleyan Edition of the Works of Henry Fielding, 2 vols.
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975), pp. 524-25: 10.1. Subsequent
quotations from Tom Jones are from this edition: page numbers are
followed by book and chapter numbers. Back
"The Plot of Tom Jones, JGE, 4 (1950):
115; rpt. with alterations and additions as "The Concept of Plot and the
Plot of Tom Jones," in Critics and Criticism, Ancient and
Modern, ed. R.S. Crane (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952),
pp. 616-47. Back
Crane, p. 637. Crane does, at one or two points,
reason from within the plot (for example, see his discussion on p. 635
regarding the grounds of the reader's security), but for the most part he
takes a bird's-eye view. Back
For example, Ian Watt argues that "if we identify
ourselves with the characters we shall not be in any mood to appreciate
the humour of the larger comedy in which they are risible participants:
life, we have been told, is a comedy only to the man who thinks, and the
comic author must not make us feel every stroke of the lash as his
characters squirm under his corrective rod" (The Rise of the Novel:
Studies in Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding [Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1957], p. 273). It is true that the reader of Tom
Jones squirms only in hindsight, but it also must be said that the
novel makes a point of providing us with that perspective. Back
The Created Self: The Reader's Role in
Eighteenth Century Fiction (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1970), p. 109.
Back
Malinda Snow, "The Judgment of Evidence in Tom
Jones," SoAR, 48 (1983): 48. Snow discusses the logical
characteristics of Fielding's narrative in detail and concludes, "Tom
Jones is not so much about learning to judge in general as it is
about learning to judge inductively. . . . the author of Tom Jones
chides the public for its naivete and complacence in trusting its own
conclusions as far as it does" (p. 41). Snow errs in her analysis by
not equating the public and the reader, and she fails to see the extent
of the evidence available to the reader (see my discussion of Book 10,
chapter 7, below). Back
The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communication in
Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1974), p. 54. Back
For examples see Martin Battestin, The Providence
of Wit: Aspects of Form in Augustan Literature and the Arts (London:
Oxford University Press, 1974), pp. 143-49; and Preston, pp. 99, 101.
Such disagreements reflect but do not address the conflicting responses
made available by the text. Rather than choosing one response over the
other, we should explore the significance of their opposition. Back
Snow, however, argues that it is impossible to
solve the puzzle of Tom's identity in advance of the revelations at the
end, because until then we "learn nothing of young Mr. Summer, Tom's
father, nor of Bridget Blifil's letter to Allworthy" (p. 40). But we
suspect Jenny before we know of a possible father, and as for the
letter, the details to support an inference of Tom's true parentage are
in fact available without it, as I note -- the narrator simply has not
given any indication of the real importance of those details, and we are
already relying on him to do our work for us. Back
See also Wolfgang Iser, The Act of Reading
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), pp. 186-87. Back
Furthermore, Preston says we enjoy a feeling of
superiority to the narrator on a second reading (p. 111), and
talks later in terms of our being taken behind the scenes with the author
(p. 122). Back
As matter progress in Tom Jones, the plot becomes increasingly
complicated: in addition to knowledge of facts, knowledge of identity
becomes a functional problem. As we have seen, our knowledge of facts is
subject to the distortions of the intervening narrator. Our knowledge
of identity is even more tenuous and problematic: we piece together a
character's identity based not on what the narrator tells us but also on
how that character interacts with other characters -- and each of these
crossings introduces its own element of distortion and uncertainty.
Noscitur a socio is Partridge's motto (p. 542; 10.5), and foolish
as it is, it admirably expresses the tenuous and contingent nature of the
knowledge of identity.
In dealing with different aspects of knowledge and ignorance in
different books, I do not mean to imply that Fielding restricts himself
similarly. Identity is obviously a problem in Book 1, and fact has its
day, in the courtroom scene in Book 10. The "final Catastrophe" of Book
18 is, in simplest terms, a revelation of the true facts of identity. In
setting up his conclusion, Fielding artfully combines and distributes
ignorance and awareness of these two forms of knowledge.
As Fielding so frequently reminds us, [the] realization of
human nature requires our own sagacity. . . . by uncovering the immanent
motive, we can assess and correct the situation, and through the
resultant judgment show that human nature is characterized by its
independence of, and superiority to any given situation. . . . the
esthetic pleasure lies in the opportunity for the reader to discover
things for himself; the didactic profit lies in his availing himself of
this opportunity, which is not intended by the author as an end in
itself, but is to serve as training for the reader's sense of
discernment. (p. 54)[11]
Notes
An Essay on Man, 2.11-12, ed. Maynard Mack,
Twickenham Edition of the Poems of Alexander Pope, vol. 3, pt. 1 (New
Haven, Yale University Press, 1950), p. 55. Back