Jones Tom - An Essay on Man

AN ESSAY ON MAN

Frontispiece to An Essay on Man from the 1745 edition, designed by Pope. The British Library Board, C.184.d.3 frontispiece.

AN
ESSAY
ON
MAN

ALEXANDER POPE

EDITED AND WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY

TOM JONES

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Princeton & Oxford

COPYRIGHT 2016 BY PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

PUBLISHED BY PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540

IN THE UNITED KINGDOM: PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
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press.princeton.edu

Jacket art: Valentine Green, An Abridgment of Mr. Popes Essay on Man, engraving, 1769, Wellcome Library, London

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Pope, Alexander, 16881744, author. | Jones, Tom, 1975 editor.

Title: An essay on man / Alexander Pope ; edited with an introduction by Tom Jones.

Description: Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, 2016.
| Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015044289 | ISBN 9780691159812 (hardback : acid-free paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Philosophy, English18th centuryPoetry.

| Human beingsPoetry. | BISAC: POETRY / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh. |

LITERARY CRITICISM / Poetry. | PHILOSOPHY / General.

Classification: LCC PR3627.A2 J66 2016 | DDC 821/.5dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015044289

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

This book has been composed in Adobe Caslon Pro and Big Caslon FB

Printed on acid-free paper.

Printed in the United States of America

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
VII

ABBREVIATIONS AND FREQUENTLY CITED WORKS
IX

INTRODUCTION
XV

NOTE ON THE TEXT
CXVII

AN ESSAY ON MAN
1

POPES KNOWLEDGE OF AUTHORS CITED
99

BIBLIOGRAPHY
107

INDEX
123

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I WOULD LIKE TO express my gratitude to the following people and institutions: the British Library for permission to reproduce the frontispiece from the 1745 edition of the poem, and four pages from a copy of the 1736 edition of the poem annotated by Pope, The British Library Board, C.184.d.3 frontispiece; C.122.e.31, pp. 2124; the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations, for permission to cite Jonathan Richardson Jr.s transcript of a manuscript of the poem (Cased + Pope. Alexander Pope. An Essay on Man. Epistles I, II, III, and 10 lines of Epistle IV. MS Copy in the hand of Jonathan Richardson, the younger, unsigned and undated); the Morgan Library & Museum for permission to cite their manuscript of the poem, MA,348; the Houghton Library, Harvard University, for permission to cite their manuscript of the poem, fms Eng 233.1; Ben Tate at Princeton University Press for his proposal that I undertake this project, and his support throughout; Simon Jarvis and Jim McLaverty for scrutinizing my early plans; Anya Clayworth for discussions of editorial policy; James Harris, Christian Maurer, and Mikko Tolonen for encouragement in Edinburgh, 2013/14; Joanna Fowler, Elaine Hobby, and Alan Ingram, the organizers of the 2013 Bill Overton memorial conference, and other colleagues encountered there, especially John Baker, Hermann Real, and Nigel Wood, for the opportunity to share ideas; Hannah Britton and Anna West, the organizers of a symposium on endings in the School of English at St Andrews, and the other participants, for making me ask where this poem ends; staff at the British Library, the Houghton Library, Harvard, the Morgan Library, New York, the National Library of Scotland, and St Andrews University Library for all their assistance; Natalie Adamson, Peter Brennan, Phil Connell, Russell Goulbourne, Neil Pattison, and Courtney Weiss Smith for reading and commenting on the introduction and text; the anonymous readers for the Press, whose responses have greatly improved my contribution to this volume; Karin Koehler for translating the text by Lessing and Mendelssohn cited in the introduction; all my colleagues in the School of English at St Andrews for maintaining a truly collective feel to our work; Gavin Alexander and Corinna Russell for hospitality and improving conversation on visits to Cambridge; Natalie Adamson for continuing to share ideas and life with me.

A NOTE ON THE FRONTISPIECE

William Warburton in his preface to the 1745 edition of the Essay, pp. vvi, interprets the frontispiece as follows: The Reader will excuse my adding a word concerning the Frontispiece; which, as it was designed and drawn by Mr. Pope himself, would be a kind of curiosity had not the excellence of the thought otherwise recommended it. We see it represents the Vanity of human Glory, in the false pursuits after Happiness: Where the Ridicule, in the Curtain-cobweb, the Deaths-head crownd with laurel, and the several Inscriptions on the fastidious ruins of Rome, have all the force and beauty of one of his best wrote Satires: Nor is there less expression in the bearded-Philosopher sitting by a fountain running to waste, and blowing up bubbles with a straw, from a small portion of water taken out of it, in a dirty dish; admirably representing the vain business of School-Philosophy, that, with a little artificial logic, sits inventing airy arguments in support of false science, while the human Understanding at large is suffered to lie waste and uncultivated.

ABBREVIATIONS AND FREQUENTLY CITED WORKS