Alexander Pope, born on 21 May 1688 and dead on 30 May 1744, was the supreme English poet of the Augustan age and one of the most technically accomplished writers in the language. His verse made the heroic couplet seem at once inevitable, conversational, polished, and inexhaustibly flexible. In his best work, a pair of rhyming pentameter lines can carry an argument, a joke, a moral judgment, a portrait, a burst of in…
“I writ because it amused me; I corrected because it was as pleasant to me to correct as to write; and I publish'd because I was told I might please such as it was a credit to please.”
Neighbourhood:
Augustan Poets, Death & Mortality, Devotional Poets, Light Verse Poets
Emotional landscape: Joy, Peace, Wonder
Thomas Parnell, born in Dublin on 11 September 1679 and dead at Chester, England, on 24 October 1718, occupies a distinctive position in the literary culture of the early eighteenth century. He was an Anglo-Irish clergyman, poet, translator, essayist, and valued member of the brilliant circle that included Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, John Gay, and John Arbuthnot. His name is often introduced through those greater…
“I know this in mankind, that when our ambition is unable to attain its end, it is not only wearied, but exasperated too at the vanity of its labours; then we speak ill of happier studies, and, sighing, condemn the excellence which we find above our reach.”
Neighbourhood:
Augustan Poets, Death & Mortality, Devotional Poets, Irish Poets
Emotional landscape: Longing, Tenderness, Sensuality
